Record breaker here and in U.S.

Harry Potter's wizardry broke box office records on both sides of the Atlantic at the weekend.

The film of JK Rowling's hit book has taken £16million in Britain and £68million in the U.S. since it opened on Friday night.

Film industry experts say they expect Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to beat all records over the next few weeks.

Polls of cinemagoers revealed that more than half thought they would go and see the film again. Titanic, which holds the record for highest box office gross over its first month in 1997, won the accolade because so many fans went to see the film three or four times.

'I think we will get a huge number of repeat sales,' said Dan Fellman, distribution president for Warner Brothers which spent £100million making and promoting the film. 'This movie could easily make half a billion dollars (£350million).'

If so, Harry Potter is on course to sink Titanic's record as the biggest box-office hit ever. The epic starring Kate Winslet took £575million in total.

But the box office is just the beginning of the bonanza for Warner Brothers, which will also make hundreds of millions from Harry Potter merchandise and sponsorship.

With the prospect of worldwide ticket sales and the release of video versions of the film next year, Harry Potter's producers may eventually make more than a billion pounds, truly a case of turning celluloid into gold.

Warner Bros president Alan Horn said: 'This is truly historic for Warner Bros Pictures. Everyone involved took great care and effort to protect the integrity of the characters and the story so beautifully rendered by JK Rowling, and we couldn't be more proud to have debuted this picture to such an overwhelmingly positive response.' Cinemas are now putting on extra screenings of the film in order to accommodate demand, and asking Warner Bros for more copies of the film.

In the States, critical acclaim for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - the title was changed because it was thought Americans would not understand what a Philosopher's Stone was - was muted.

The New York Times and the Washington Post both thought the movie was too slow, too long and occasionally confusing but that did not make any difference to the estimated thirteen and a half million people, more than half of them children, who have seen the film since it opened.

Not everyone in the U.S. was able to see the film this weekend. In the North Dakota town of Fargo, a school trip for 100 children was cancelled after local politicians complained about the movie's depiction of witchcraft.