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.
Muggles beware! Pottermania is back
Muggles take note. A new and possibly unprecedented wave of Pottermania is about to hit movie goers, newspaper readers, Internet visitors and other innocent bystanders as Warner Bros gears up for the release of the eighth and final instalment of the Harry Potter film franchise.
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2″ is released in theatres on July 15th, and brings to and end one of cinema’s most successful series. For the first time it’s in 3D and there will, there absolutely has to be, resolution of the question — Harry or Voldemort? — by the end.
For those of sturdy constitution, Warner is putting on the whole series again in select British cinemas, starting with “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” on Friday, July 8th and then running through the week until the launch of Deathly Hallows – Part 2 the folloing Friday. We can expect many more such announcements and celebrations in the coming weeks.
Of course, most of the world knows the answer to the key question posed above, as it was in the seventh and final book of the series created by J.K. Rowling. But the lack of a surprise ending is unlikely to dent the box office too badly, with experts predicting another ticket sale bonanza to bid farewell to the fictional boy wizard and his pals at Hogwarts.
That said, for all the impressive numbers — and in Hollywood terms, they are striking indeed — some studies suggest that attendance figures, as opposed to overall takings, have shown a sizeable decline in the United States over the 10-year life of the franchise. It will be interesting to see if the anticipation and marketing ahead of the final chapter help to reverse that trend.
Trust me, Pottermania never died. It has been alive and growing. This is going to be a bittersweet event, but yes, the numbers should be impressive.
Four months of summer end in a Hollywood haze
The summer movie season is officially over with the end of this weekend and — much like a hazy day in Hollywood – results were mixed. Box office was up based on higher average ticket prices, but attendance was down, which generally speaking has been the case for years as movies competed with other forms of entertainment.
The expected big hits, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” paid handsomely at box offices. Some movies flopped: “Land of the Lost,” “Year One.” Others were big surprises: “The Hangover.” And the indie market did well with “500 Days of Summer” and “The Hurt Locker.”
We were out on the streets in Las Vegas this past weekend, asking people what they they liked and didn’t this summer. Even Elvis gets a crack at our Flip camera. Click below for a quick view.
(video by Marc Price)
From “Potter” to “Proposal,” some fan favorites at the movies
Disney’s animated family flm “G-Force” took the U.S. box office crown over the weekend, just barely squeaking by the new “Harry Potter” movie. Last week, we were in Florida talking to fans about their favorite movies, and this past weekend, we were back on Hollywood boulevard. Here’s what some of them said about their favorite flicks of recent weeks.
(video by Marc Price)
I meant what I said about “The Proposal”. It was a damn fine movie. Also, check out Marc Price standup. Good stuff.-derekjaye@gmail.com
Emma Watson becomes an Ivy League “Brunonian”
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” star Emma Watson has graduated from her on-screen tutelage at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to the Ivy League, and in particular to Brown University.
The 19-year-old Watson told Paste magazine that she would be attending Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, confirming rumors to that effect that have been circulating recently.
Watson is a straight-A student, despite having largely grown up on a movie set since she starred in the first “Harry Potter” film in 2001.
Watson told Paste that she will attend Brown “to read literature.” Watson is the latest of several actors to attend Ivy League schools in the United States. Jodie Foster went to Yale University, where she, like Watson, focused on literature. More recently, Natalie Portman attended Harvard University.
J.K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” book series that the movies are based on, is no stranger to the Ivy League either. Last year, she gave a commencement speech at Harvard University that was widely covered in the media.
Watson plays magic charmer Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter” saga. Her latest movie, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” has made more than $394 million at worldwide box offices since opening on Wednesday.
Watson told Paste that she is not looking to escape fame by going off to school.
Harry Potter pushes “Twilight” aside in early box office
Move over “Twilight”. Harry Potter’s spells are way more potent.
The new movie “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” just blasted box-office records by taking in $22.2 million in midnight screenings alone in the United States — and that’s before most fans even woke up to premiere day of the sixth instalment of the wizard franchise.
Harry and his Hogwart pals also regained their place among the top three of advance sales tickets of all time — an honor it lost to vampire blockbuster “Twilight” last year.
The bumper figures give the lie to recent suggestions in some media that Potter might be losing his magic with those who started reading his books 12 years ago when they were kids, but who are now well into their teens — and older.
With “Half-Blood Prince” already having won the first skirmish in the popularity battle with “Twilight”, everything is pointing to a massive opening weekend box office.
Are you a fan of both Potter and “Twilight” and is it fair to draw comparisons between them?
I was first a loyal fan of Harry Potter. I used to read read one of those books in under one day, and I always found them very good, but even for me, before I enjoyed Twilight, I began to skip the beginning that always seemed to be boring, and the same to me. I mean, I know that stuff happened with Harry at his home in the Dursley’s but, still I just go so bored of having entire chapters set aside for just a slow part of the book. I was happy when Rowling finally began to make him go places and do stuff earlier in the book.I read Twilight 2 years ago, and after reading the first book, I dived into the rest of the searies. When we found out Twilight was going to be a movie, I swear, there was about 5 minutes of squealing and jumping. Eventually My friends began reading it, especially after they’ve seen the trailers for it.In my comparison to both the books and the movies, Harry Potter was done well for the first 2 movies, and was messed up after that, but the books continued to be fairly good. Twilight has been also good and close to the book, but I will also state something for those who haven’t read the book:If you are looking for the funny parts, there are. They are just in the book. My friends was upset when they left out one of those scenes, but I recognized that they were making this movie more dramatic, so now, even though she ‘hates’ twilight, she can’t wait for New moon. And besides, in the 3rd book, every chapter has something funny in it. And I know Harry Potter didn’t get funny until the 4th or 5th book.So, really, I’m dying to see the next Harry Potter movie, but the buzz for it by now is not as much as it used to be, whereas New Moon seems to be fairly, well, New and eventually it will most likely take out Harry Potter by at least the 3rd movie.
“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!
