The Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script has beaten Fifty Shades of Grey to become the fastest selling book of the decade in the UK.
The new release has sold more than 680,000 copies during its first three days on sale, compared to the 664,478 that Fifty Shades of Grey sold back in 2012. This puts it on course to become the second biggest first-week sales for a book, topped only by the concluding chapter in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, The Deathly Hallows.
The book is a copy of the rehearsal script for the ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ stage play. (Image Credit: Ben A. Pruchnie / Getty Images)
As you would imagine, this means that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is also the fastest-selling script book, with it also having shifted two million copies in North America within its first two days on sale. Although Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling was only partially responsible for the script, with her having been joined by co-writers John Tiffany and Jack Thorne in devising the story, it seems that the brand of Harry Potter has been enough to carry it to tremendous numbers.
The Cursed Child stage play has attracted rave reviews since its official premiere on July 30th, with its plot following the lives of Harry & co. nineteen years after the events of Deathly Hallows. In the play, Harry is depicted as a Ministry of Magic employee, while his younger son Albus Severus Potter is beginning his journey in Hogwarts. The book is a direct copy of the play’s rehearsal script, though is being referred to as the “Harry Potter #8” by some fans given its expansion of the Harry Potter story.
