In box office terms, Harry Potter might be the most successful film franchise of all time (cue argument about Star Wars), but on the social networks, the film is a distant second to the movie adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga.
Ahead of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows next month, Twilight currently has just under 15 million fans of its official Facebook page worldwide, joined by 405,000 Twitter followers and 227,000 YouTube subscribers, easily making it the most dominant film entity across the social networks.
In comparison, the second most ‘followed’ film series, Harry Potter, has less than a quarter of the Facebook fans (3.1 million) and far fewer Twitter followers (114,543), with an even smaller YouTube subscriber base of 8,738, according to data from Famecount.
In financial terms, Potter is by far Twilight’s superior having grossed more than 5 billion dollars from six films across nearly a decade, compared to just over a billion dollars at the box office that Twilight has so far delivered from the trilogy starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart which began in 2008.
And on the social networks, the behemoth that is the Harry Potter franchise is also beginning to flex its muscles, gaining new fans quickly as the excitement builds towards next month’s Deathly Hallows release.
At present, Potter is attracting around 450,000 new Facebook fans every week, compared to the Twilight Saga’s 350,000, a gap that is sure to widen when the much anticipated seventh film hits cinemas.
However, with such a big gap to make up, it will be a long time before Harry Potter fans can say they rule the Internet like the rule the cinemas.
Other films to make it into the social networking top ten include Saw and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland which both have around 2.9 million Facebook fans, followed by Dear John, Step Up and James Cameron’s Avatar who all have more than 2.4 million fans on the biggest social network.
It will be interesting to see how Columbia Picture’s new movie The Social Network which charts the history of Facebook does on the social networks as the film begins screening across the world this week …
… you’d think it’d have a good chance of getting in the Facebook charts … unless Zuckerberg and co find a way of stopping it …
Good news for Rob!
