Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban currently beats The Conjuring 58–42
Fantasy horror edges out the haunted-house franchise.
The Verdict Genre Clash
This matchup has 19 votes — still early. The picture may shift as more people weigh in.
Cuarón's Time-Turner sequence — the camera tracking Hermione and Harry as they loop back through events the audience already watched, the earlier scenes acquiring new meaning from the new perspective — is the franchise's most structurally ambitious scene and a piece of filmmaking that Wan's more conventional haunted-house structure never attempts. The Conjuring has Wan's immaculate pacing and Vera Farmiga's committed performance. But pacing within a genre is a different achievement than reimagining a franchise's formal possibilities. The lead says reimagination outperforms perfection. Cuarón changed what Potter could be. Wan perfected what horror already was.
The Numbers
| Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | The Conjuring | |
|---|---|---|
| Head-to-Head | 58% | 42% |
| Overall Win Rate | 64% | 36% |
| Championships | 26 | 1 |
| Budget | $130M | $13M |
| Box Office | $790M | $321M |
Where This Matchup Sits
They come from different genres — Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban sits at #7 in Adventure, while The Conjuring is in the bottom quarter of Horror.
Elsewhere on the platform, they have a common problem — Toy Story beats both of them. Whatever else separates these two films, they share that one loss.
The Conjuring earned 24.7x its budget; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban returned 6.1x. But Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban wins the head-to-head — commercial efficiency doesn't carry over to the bracket.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban gets chosen fast (5.3s). The Conjuring gets chosen slowly (10.9s). Both choices are valid — they're just coming from different places.
Where to Watch
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