Will Harry Potter continue to enchant the box office?

"Harry Potter" stars Michael Gambon, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Alan Rickman.

"Harry Potter" stars Michael Gambon, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Alan Rickman.

Not to sound like a Muggle, but in a time of "Transformers" and "Twilight," does Harry Potter still matter?

Is Daniel Radcliffe destined to play second fiddle to Shia LaBeouf or Robert Pattinson as box-office prince? Will it take Amortentia (the most powerful love potion in the world) to make us wild about Harry again?

The answer will come Wednesday when "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" opens, but the movie landscape has undergone seismic shifts since the film franchise started in 2001 and skipped through the decade earning nearly $4.5 billion worldwide.

The entertainment world has morphed just since August, when Warner Bros. announced it was bumping the sixth Potter movie from November 2008 to July 2009 and incited angry online petitioners.

A year ago, this was a lucky week for the studio when "The Dark Knight" started its ascent to No. 2 on the list of all-time box-office hits (behind "Titanic" ).

Now, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" has Voldemort tightening his grip on the Muggle and wizarding worlds, as danger and hormones rage.

After box-office expert Paul Dergarabedian saw the latest "Potter" at an industry preview, he blogged that he was "blown away like a Quidditch player on a supercharged broomstick.

"I just thought the movie was terrific, I really enjoyed it. It made sense to me, I got involved, I liked the fact that they're older and definitely more assured in their acting and even the characters are more interesting," says Dergarabedian of hollywood.com.

"When you have Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, I mean there's some great actors in this movie. Robbie Coltrane. It just looks amazing, but it's more than that," with a strong humanistic story.

"It wasn't like a big mechanical beast," he says, not naming names. "It reminded me of an old Hollywood spectacle. It looked very expensive and very rich."

It's a coming-of-age story with humor, heart, budding romances and threads about loyalty and betrayal. A cherished character dies, making for a movie scene that readers such as 15-year-old Sam Booth of Mount Lebanon, Pa., anticipate with curiosity and dread.

She will be away at camp when the movie debuts and says, "I am not happy about it." So, she will make a beeline for the expected blockbuster when she returns.

Sam has read the books six times each and her mother, Laura Booth, and grandmother, Mary Ann Evans, have managed multiple readings, too. Sister Julie, who just turned 11, has been on page 34 of the first book for two years while dad Andrew Booth is stuck on the third volume.

"I love all the characters, and I just think the plot is amazing. I'm the type of person who falls in love with the fantasy and stuff like that," Sam says. She and her friends saw "Up" after finals, but "I don't think half of us were nearly as excited about it as we are for 'Harry Potter.' "

She is not all Potter all the time, and counts the "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Transformers" and "Batman" movies among her favorites, along with Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" and Libba Bray's "A Great and Terrible Beauty" series.

But not everyone is aboard the Hogwarts Express, however.

Marketing expert Jack Trout from Trout & Partners in Old Greenwich, Conn., says, "I view 'Potter,' in some respects, as sort of a fading franchise. In other words, I think there's been so much of it for so long and essentially new things have arrived ... and I think a lot of the 'Potter' crowd has moved on to vampires."

The bloodsuckers are everywhere, from the "Twilight" and "Vampire Kisses" books to the decidedly adult "True Blood," the Anna Paquin vampire series on HBO. And the marketing expert suggests there's a point where Potter fatigue - same bad guys, same good guys - can set in.

But Trout concedes, "The fact that they've kept it for so long is mind-boggling. Few franchises in show business really last that long," unless you're talking about an entertainment phenomenon such as Michael Jackson.

"They'll do fine" at the box office he says of "Half-Blood Prince," but adds, "Even Potter grew up, and their marketplace has certainly grown up."

As for the books, "certainly there isn't the anxious demand that there was before the seventh 'Harry Potter' or the fourth Stephenie Meyer, but we aren't seeing a real drop-off in interest, and I think it's because in some cases there's a new audience coming along every day," says Lisa Dennis, coordinator of Children's Collections for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

If older readers have graduated to other books, a new crop of 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds is taking the plunge. And saying with a laugh that she was dating herself, Dennis adds that the books remind her of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy in that people love to revisit them.

One series that doesn't have the same staying power: "The Spiderwick Chronicles," about siblings thrust into extraordinary circumstances as they lift the veil on a world of faeries. "The first five books were wildly popular, the movie came out - I think it did OK - but I don't think it built any kind of a new audience," Dennis says.

A follow-up series, "Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles," did not generate enthusiasm, and interest in the original volumes has cooled. She notes the complexity and dense mythology of "Harry Potter" vs. the "Spiderwick" series.

"There are things that come and go, but I have to say that I think 'Harry Potter' and probably Stephenie Meyer's books are here for some time," Dennis says.

So are the movies, since Dennis recently ordered new copies of the previous five for the libraries so patrons can refresh their memories about where they left off. That would be with "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the fifth-highest-grossing movie of 2007.

Circling back to the question of relevancy, Dergarabedian says, "Harry Potter was still relevant in a (2007) world where there was 'Spider-Man 3' and 'Shrek the Third' and the first 'Transformers,' which had come out July 3," a week before "Potter."

The law of diminishing returns usually applies to franchises, but some either hold their own or win Oscars, as with the third and final "Lord of the Rings."

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" will be the first Rowling adaptation since "Twilight," but it also has girl power driving it. The series also has withstood date and seasonal switches and the audience has literally grown up with 16-year-old Harry, Ron and Hermione, leading to predictions for another big opening week.

If not record-breaking, certainly magical.

© 2009 Knoxville.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.