The latest Harry Potter film has broken box office records by taking more than £5 million on its first day of release in the UK.

The Prisoner of Azkaban, the third in the boy wizard series, took a staggering £5.03 million, according to the Screen International website.

The movie, which sees Harry as a teenager enter his junior year at Hogwarts, opened in 535 locations in the UK on bank holiday Monday.

Teenage angst runs through the plot as convicted murderer Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) escapes the wizards' prison and seems to be coming after Harry.

The last Potter film, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, made £2.18m on its first day of release, eventually grossing £55 million at the UK box office.

The UK release of The Prisoner of Azkaban was brought forward to coincide with a bank holiday and the first day of the school half-term holidays.

Odeon cinemas, which accounts for one in four cinema tickets sold in the UK, said the film generated £1.2 million at its box office on the first day of release.

The figure is more than twice that for the first day of release of the first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and nearly three times as much as the second instalment.

Odeon cinemas said it had record-breaking ticket sales of nearly £4 million for the bank holiday weekend, the most successful for this millennium, thanks to Potter.

Source: Press Release