HARRY Potter & The Order of The Phoenix was the most successful film at the UK and Ireland box office in 2007, it has been confirmed.

The fifth movie in the ever-popular series based on JK Rowling’s best-selling books made more than £49.4m, comfortably beating second placed movie, Pirates of The Caribbean: At World’s End, which earned over £42m.

The top five films were completed by Shrek The Third (38,620,659), The Simpsons Movie (£38,544,114) and Spider-Man 3 (£33,547,946) proving that sequels continue to prove popular with audiences, no matter how bad the reviews.

Pixar’s latest animated treat Ratatouille made the top 10 at sixth place with a healthy £24,716,887, while Matt Damon’s allegedly final outing as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Ultimatum came in at seventh, with (£23,703,150).

Transformers (£22,863,864), Mr Bean’s Holiday (£22,142,332) and Simon Pegg comedy Hot Fuzz (£21,005,064) completed the top 10.

Will Smith tops UK festive box office

Another of 2007’s strong performers looks set to be Will Smith’s apocalyptic thriller I Am Legend, which topped the UK and Ireland box office this week.

The film marks the latest big screen incarnation of a 1950s sci-fi novel by Richard Matheson and opened on Boxing Day, when it set a new record for highest opening figure.

The film took £2,193m on its first day of release and has so far pulled in £11m in five days, to ensure that Warner Bros became the UK’s number one distributor for 2007.

In the movie, Will Smith stars as the last human survivor of a plague which has killed millions of people and turned the survivors into flesh-hungry mutants.

Disney’s popular fantasy film Enchanted fell from the pre-Christmas top spot to three, while The Golden Compass, based on the Philip Pullman novel and starring Nicole Kidman, held firm at number two.

The end of year figures were compiled by Screen International.

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