HarrypOTTerandTheCUrSedChIld SellS 2 Mn COpIeS In TWO dayS, BreaKS ThedeaThlyhallOWS’ reCOrd
LONDON: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the script for a new London play telling the eighth story in the boy wizard series, has sold more than 2 million copies in its first two days on the market in the United States, publisher Scholastic said on Wednesday. The book — a script instead of a narrative novel like author J.K. Rowling’s previous Potter books — was published at midnight on Sunday, shortly after the play’s gala opening. The play is sold out through May 2017. Cursed Child, written by Rowling, screenwriter and playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany, is set 19 years after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the original series, released in 2007. Scholastic, the U.S. and Canadian publisher of Cursed Child, said the sales figures were unprecedented for a script book. Prior to its release, Barnes & Noble said Cursed Child was the most preordered book since 2007’s Deathly Hallows. Scholastic said it had ordered 4.5 million first printing copies of Cursed Child and retailers had reported “fast-paced, record-breaking pre-sales” ahead of the release date. Full first-week U.S. sales figures of Cursed Child from Nielsen BookScan are not expected until next week. UK book industry magazine and website The Bookseller said if the sales rate continued, the script book would “be the second biggestselling single week for one title since records began, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as the first.” Deathly Hallows sold 1.8 million copies and 780,000 units of the adult edition in the U.K. in its launch week, it added.