15 Most Highly-Anticipated Blockbuster Movies In History

When you consider that the Harry Potter franchise would go on to earn $7.7bn at the box office and countless billions more in merchandise, Warner Bros. picking up the film rights for just $1.65m in 1999 must go down as one of the bargains of the century.

Not quite the all-consuming cultural behemoth it would become in the following years but not too far away from it either, the hype surrounding the release of The Philosopher's Stone definitively proved that the franchise was about to become a full-blown pop culture phenomenon to rival even the mighty Star Wars.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released the year after the publication of The Goblet of Fire had launched the book sales into the stratosphere, and the franchise's live-action provided similar record-breaking numbers.

The marketing blitz kicked into overdrive with Coca-Cola signing a $150m promotional deal to make sure Harry's face was plastered all over the globe, while the first trailer premiered via satellite (remember that?) before going onto the internet and school trips were organized the world over to take classes full of children to see the movie. There was no doubt about it, PotterMania had well and truly arrived.

The Philosopher's Stone broke records on both sides of the Atlantic and would go on to earn a mammoth $974.8m, making it the second-biggest movie in history at the time behind only Titanic, and remained the highest-grossing Harry Potter movie of them all for a full decade until it was finally surpassed by Deathly Hallows Part 2 in 2011.