Books

'The Cursed Child' Just Outsold Shakespeare

by Emma Oulton

It's been less than two weeks since the "eighth Harry Potter book" burst onto the scene — but already J.K. Rowling's latest project has beaten some serious records. Now, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the best-selling play since records began. That means that more people have bought copies of the new Harry Potter script than any of the plays you had to study at school. Including any Shakespeare play. That is seriously impressive.

In its first week alone, Jack Thorne's Cursed Child script sold 847, 886 copies through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market. To put that into context, that's more than the entire Drama Texts, Plays, and Screenplays sub-category, which sold only 690,577 units in the whole year of 2015. This is just further proof: everything J.K. touches turns to gold.

And that's not the only record this play has broken. The Cursed Child has sold faster than any book since...well, the last Harry Potter book. J.K. Rowling may have been able to beat the record E.L. James set with Fifty Shades of Grey — but she can't quite shift her own Deathly Hallows record. (That novel sold over 2 million copies in a single week, which is some kind of witchcraft.)

J.K. Rowling has said Cursed Child is the end of the series — but after seeing the incredible reaction to this latest release, maybe she'll reconsider. Please just give us one more, J.K. — if only so we can finally see Scorpius and Albus fly off into the sunset together!