Fan Fare
Entertainment behind the scenes
from Photographers Blog:
When Harry met Hermione…
Last night the great Behemoth that is the Harry Potter franchise machine rolled into town for the world premiere of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2": the eighth and final film installment from JK Rowling’s phenomenally successful book series about the adventures of a boy wizard.
A swathe of central London seemed to be shut down for the launch. Thousands of young fans had camped out for up to five days in Trafalgar Square waiting to glimpse their screen idols, and a red carpet measuring some 1.2 kilometers (0.7 miles) – reputedly the longest in the world - underlining the scale of this publicity spectacular. Despite having shot more film premieres than eaten bags of popcorn at the cinema, I still have to admit to being wowed by the scale and choreography of this event.
The three leading cast members have become instantly recognizable faces and multi-millionaires but remain, they say, "like siblings" since being selected as unknown child actors for the first film "Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone" some ten years ago.
“Harry Potter” works like magic at box offices
With the latest Harry Potter movie opening across North America tomorrow, “The Half-Blood Prince” is already — and perhaps expectedly — among the hottest-selling movie tickets of the year.
From Alaska to Florida, 2,500 midnight showtimes of “The Half-Blood Prince” have sold out, according to Fandango, a top movie and entertainment online ticket seller.
The website is currently selling an average of eight Harry Potter tickets per second.
It seems the British boy wizard has cast the right spell to reclaim his spot among the top 3 advance-ticket sellers of all time, a coveted honor lost last fall to “Twilight”.
In fact, by the end of the day, “The Half-Blood Prince” may even outpace “The Dark Knight” in advance-ticket sales.
“Harry Potter fans are insanely loyal,” said Fandango spokesperson Harry Medved. “And it’s clear that the online buzz and positive reviews for ‘The Half-Blood Prince’ are fueling the online ticket sales.”
The first time i saw the Half Blood Prince, i really wasnt a huge fan of it. I thought ther was too much time spent being silly and not enough on the story. Plus the obvious sexual inuendos *cough shoelaces cough* were very hard to watch. But when i saw it again, knowing what to expect, I didnt think it was so bad.
You cant go into the theatre prepared to compare the movie to teh book, they are two seperate entities. The book is always going to be better, and there are always going to be a S**t ton of things missing. You just have to think of it as an entirely different medium, then you will enjoy the movies a whole lot more.
As for Twilight. I was a fan of it before it got popular (and yes I am a guy), but i thought the movie was horible. Robert Pattinson should have stayed dead as Cedric, becuase his preformance was flat and misguided. you saw littereally nohting og the rest of the Cullens, who were protrayed just as poorly. Really hte best part was Charlie, he saved it for me. I am not looking forward to New Moon, nor will I see it, becuase its going to be nothing but 2 hours of Shirtless Jacob, and I can stand to miss that.
“Harry Potter” faces its “Twilight”
As the film industry looks ahead to box office business after “Harry Potter,” with the lucrative franchise due to wind up in the summer of 2011, one person in as good a position as most to offer an opinion on what may be the next big film series suggests that the “Twilight” vampire romances could fill the void.
“Harry Potter” 1-5 have amassed $4.5 billion at global box offices so far, and with HP 6, otherwise known as “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, due to hit cinemas this week, the cash tills look set to go on ringing. HP 7, the final book in J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard series, has been split into two movies, meaning that at the current rate, the 8-movie series could take a cool $7.2 billion.
Last year’s first outing for the “Twilight” series, based on the Stephenie Meyer books, made $380 million worldwide, according to www.boxofficemojo.com, a far cry from HP 1. But the word — and more to the point, the hype — appears to be spreading beyond U.S. shores, and with heartthrob lead actor Robert Pattinson causing hysteria wherever he breathes, the momentum could grow.
Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry in the “Potter” pictures, knows how Pattinson feels.
“The thing that’s interesting for me is that it’s the only other franchise really which comes close to ‘Potter’ in terms of the mania that surrounds it and the attention that the leads get and how global it is,” he told reporters in London recently. “So part of me doesn’t actually want to have an opinion on the film.”
Underlining the pressures superstardom can bring, Pattinson was hit by a taxi in New York last month while trying to flee a crowd of hysterical teenage fans. He was not seriously hurt.
Radcliffe is under no illusions about why the girls scream when they see him.
This is stupid, the Twilight HP comparison is impossible. The HP series is the most popular of all time. Twilight will never make 4.5 billion let alone the amount HP will make by the end. Plus while the HP movies aren’t perfect, the Twilight ones are terrible. The HP ones have Alan Rickman, Jim Broadbent, and Helena Bonham Carter all giving wonderful performances. They are also visual wonders that are incredible feats of film making. The Twilight movie is utterly crudely made and not elegant like HP.
“Harry Potter’s” most anticipated kiss: Not with Harry!
The “Harry Potter” series is all grown up, that is if you count an on-screen lip lock as a sign of maturity. In one of the most talked about moments in an upcoming “Harry Potter” movie, Emma Watson, who plays witchcraft ingenue Hermione Granger, kisses Rupert Grint, the actor who plays Harry Potter’s friend Ron Weasley.
It does not come in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which opens in the U.S. and many other countries on July 15, but in the next installment in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which is split into two movies.
Still, fans of the series can’t wait to see that bit of cinematic spark between Watson and Grint, and interestingly they appear to be less interested in Harry Potter working his own romantic mojo. In a poll conducted by online ticket seller Fandango.com, 59 percent of respondents said the on-screen kiss they most want to see is between Hermione (Watson) and Ron (Grint). Only 41 percent of respondents said they can’t wait to see the peck between Harry Potter (played by Daniel Radcliffe) and Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright).
Maybe that has something to do with the screen appeal of the 19-year-old Watson, who was listed No. 82 on men’s magazine Maxim‘s list of the most beautiful 100 women in the world.
The fact that a kiss is one of the most anticipated moments in the “Harry Potter” series shows how the movies have evolved along with the audience to more adult themes of love and romance.
On that note, director David Yates said in this Reuters story: ”Our cast are just getting that little bit older now and the hormones are starting to fly and for me it marks a real transition point between our cast as children and our cast as adults.”
Watson herself seemed to describe a dizzying conflict of impulses in an explanation of her kiss with Grint. On the BBC program Friday Night with Jonathan Ross,” Watson said that she was not thrilled to do the kissing scene, because of the public interest. “I pounced on him, I was so desperate to get it over with,” Watson said on the program.
First look at “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”
Okay all you aspiring young wizards and Harry Potter fans, in general. We’re certain you were disappointed when Warner Bros. delayed the release of the upcoming “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” until July, from its previously scheduled roll-out date earlier this month.
But never fear, cable network ABC Family is hosting a weekend of four of the “Harry Potter” films PLUS a “first look” at portions of “Half-Blood Prince.” The “Harry Potter” weekend will run on ABC Family December 5-7.
I think the movie trailer looks great and I’m looking forward to July 2009!
