Everything about Harry Potter totally explained
Harry Potter is a
heptalogy of
fantasy novels written by
British author
J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the
eponymous adolescent wizard
Harry Potter, together with
Ron Weasley and
Hermione Granger, his best friends. The central
story arc concerns Harry's struggle against the evil wizard
Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry's parents in his quest to conquer the
wizarding world, after which he seeks to subjugate the Muggle (non-magical) world to his rule.
Since the release of the first novel
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997, which was retitled
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the
United States, the books have gained immense popularity, critical acclaim and commercial success worldwide. The series has spawned films, video games and Potter-themed merchandise. As of April 2008, the seven book series has sold more than 375 million copies and have been translated into more than 64 languages. The seventh and last book in the series,
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released on
21 July 2007. Publishers announced a record-breaking 12 million copies for the first print run in the U.S. alone.
The success of the novels has made Rowling the highest-earning novelist in history. English language versions of the books are published by
Bloomsbury in the
United Kingdom,
Scholastic Press in the
United States,
Allen & Unwin in
Australia, and
Raincoast Books in
Canada.
Thus far, the first five books have been made into
a series of motion pictures by
Warner Bros. The sixth,
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, began filming in September 2007, with a scheduled release of
21 November,
2008. The series also originated much
tie-in merchandise, making the Harry Potter brand worth £7 billion ($15 billion).
In 1995,
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was completed and the
manuscript was sent off to prospective
agents. The second agent she tried, Christopher Little, offered to represent her and sent the manuscript to Bloomsbury. After eight other publishers had rejected
Philosopher's Stone, Bloomsbury offered Rowling a £2,500 advance for its publication.
Despite Rowling's statement that she didn't have any particular age group in mind when she began to write the
Harry Potter books, the publishers initially targeted them at children age nine to eleven. On the eve of publishing, Joanne Rowling was asked by her publishers to adopt a more gender-neutral
pen name, in order to appeal to the male members of this age group, fearing that they wouldn't be interested in reading a novel they knew to be written by a woman. She elected to use J. K. Rowling (Joanne Kathleen Rowling), using her grandmother's name as her second name, because she's no middle name.
The first
Harry Potter book was published in the
United Kingdom by Bloomsbury in July 1997 and in the
United States by
Scholastic in September 1998, but not before Rowling had received $105,000 for the American rights – an unprecedented amount for a children's book by a then unknown author. Fearing that American readers wouldn't associate the word "philosopher" with a magical theme (as a
Philosopher's Stone is alchemy-related), Scholastic insisted that the book be given the title
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the American market.
Rowling's publishers were able to capitalise on this buzz by the rapid, successive releases of the first four books that allowed neither Rowling's audience's excitement nor interest to wane while she took a break from writing between the release of
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and also quickly solidified a loyal readership. The series has also gathered adult fans, leading to two editions of each
Harry Potter book being released (in markets other than the United States), identical in text but with one edition's cover artwork aimed at children and the other aimed at adults.
Completion of the series
In December 2005, Rowling stated on her web site, "2006 will be the year when I write the final book in the
Harry Potter series." Updates have since followed in her online diary chronicling the progress of
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, with the release date of
21 July 2007.
The book itself was finished on
11 January,
2007 in the
Balmoral Hotel,
Edinburgh, where she scrawled a message on the back of a bust of Hermes. It read: “JK Rowling finished writing
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (652) on
11 January,
2007.”
Rowling herself has stated that the last chapter of the seventh book (in fact, the epilogue) was completed "in something like 1990".
In June 2006, Rowling, on an appearance on the British talk show
Richard & Judy, announced that the chapter had been modified as one character "got a reprieve" and two others who previously survived the story had in fact been killed. She also said she could see the logic in killing off Harry to stop other writers from writing books about Harry's life after Hogwarts.
On
March 28,
2007, the cover art for the Bloomsbury Adult and Child versions and the Scholastic version were released.
After Deathly Hallows
Rowling spent seventeen years writing the seven Harry Potter books. In a 2000 interview through
Scholastic, her American publisher, Rowling stated that there isn't a university after Hogwarts. Concerning the series continuing past book seven, she stated, "I won't say
never, but I've no plans to write an eighth book." She has since said that if she does write an eighth book Harry Potter won't be the central character, as his story has been told, and that she wouldn't begin such a project for at least ten years.
When asked about writing other Harry Potter-related books similar to
Quidditch Through the Ages and
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, she's said that she might consider doing this with proceeds donated to charity, as was the case with those two books. Another suggestion is an encyclopedia-style tome containing information that never made it into the series, also for charity. She has revealed she's currently penning two books, one for children and one not for children.
In February 2007 Rowling issued a statement on her website about finishing the final book, in which she compared her mixed feelings of "mourning" and "incredible sense of achievement" to those expressed by
Charles Dickens in the preface of the 1850 edition of
David Copperfield, "a two-years' imaginative task." "To which," she added, "I can only sigh, try seventeen years, Charles…"
On
July 24,
2007, Rowling announced in an interview that she "probably will" write an encyclopedia of the
Harry Potter world, which would include background information cut from the narrative as well as post-
Deathly Hallows information, including details of what happens to the other characters, who the new Hogwarts headmaster is, and more. Rowling refers to the encyclopedia as the "Scottish Book", a take on the
Scottish play.
In a 90-minute live Web chat, Rowling revealed what several of the characters did in the years between the conclusion of the book and the epilogue.
Translations
The series has been translated into 65 languages, placing Rowling among the most translated authors in history. The first translation was into
American English, as many words and concepts used by the characters in the novels may have been misleading to a young American audience.
(External Link
)(External Link) Subsequently the books have seen translations in languages as diverse as
Ukrainian,
Hindi,
Bengali,
Welsh,
Afrikaans and
Vietnamese. The first volume has been translated into
Latin and even
Ancient Greek, making it the longest published work in that language since the novels of
Heliodorus of Emesa in the 3rd century AD.
The high profile and huge public demand for a decent local translation means that a great deal of care is often taken in the task. In some countries such as Italy, the first book was revised by the publishers and issued in an updated edition, in response to feedback from readers. In countries such as China and Portugal, the translation is conducted by a group of translators working together to save time. Some of the translators hired to work on the books were quite well known prior to their work on Harry Potter, such as
Viktor Golyshev, who oversaw the
Russian translation of the series' fifth book. Golyshev was previously best known for translating
William Faulkner and
George Orwell; his tendency to snub the Harry Potter books in interviews and refer to them as inferior literature may be the reason he didn't return to work on later books in the series. The
Turkish translation of books two to seven was undertaken by
Sevin Okyay, a popular literary critic and cultural commentator. For reasons of secrecy, translation can only start when the books are released in English; thus there's a lag of several months before the translations are available. This has led to more and more copies of the English editions being sold to impatient fans in non-English speaking countries. Such was the clamour to read the fifth book that its
English language edition became the first English-language book ever to top the bestseller list in
France.
Literary analysis
Structure and genre
The novels are very much in the
fantasy genre; in many respects they're also
bildungsromans, coming of age novels. They can also be considered to be part of the British children's boarding school genre, which includes
Enid Blyton's
Malory Towers,
St Clares and the
Naughtiest Girl series, and
Frank Richards Billy Bunter novels. The stories are predominantly set in Hogwarts, a fictional British boarding school for wizards, where the curriculum includes the use of
magic. In this sense they're "in a direct line of descent from
Thomas Hughes's
Tom Brown's School Days and other Victorian and Edwardian novels of British public school life". They are also, in the words of
Stephen King, "shrewd mystery tales", and each book is constructed in the manner of a
Sherlock Holmes-style
mystery adventure; the books leave a number of clues hidden in the narrative, while the characters pursue a number of suspects through various exotic locations, leading to a twist ending that often reverses what the characters had been led to believe. The stories are told from a
third person limited point of view; with very few exceptions (such as the opening chapters of
Philosopher's Stone and
Deathly Hallows and the first two chapters of
Half-Blood Prince), the reader learns the secrets of the story when Harry does. The thoughts and plans of other characters, even central ones such as Hermione and Ron, are kept hidden until revealed to Harry.
The books tend to follow a very strict formula. Set over the course of consecutive school years, they each begin with Harry at home with his relatives the Dursleys in the
Muggle world, enduring their ill treatment. Subsequently, Harry goes to a specific magical location (
Diagon Alley, the
Weasleys' residence or
Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place) for a short period before the new school year begins, which he commences by boarding the
school train at Platform 9¾,
Kings Cross Station. Once at school, new or redefined characters are introduced, and Harry overcomes new everyday school issues, such as difficult essays, awkward crushes, and unsympathetic teachers. The stories reach their climax in the summer term, near or just after final exams, when Harry confronts either
Voldemort or one of his followers, the
Death Eaters. In the aftermath, he learns important lessons through exposition and discussions with headteacher and
mentor Albus Dumbledore. This formula was completely broken in the final novel,
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in which Harry and his friends spend most of their time away from Hogwarts, and only return there to face Voldemort at the dénouement.
Themes
According to Rowling, a major theme in the series is the theme of
death. She says:
bigotry" and that also pass on a message to "question authority and… not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth".
While the books could be said to comprise many other themes, such as power/abuse of power,
love,
prejudice, and free choice, they are, as J.K. Rowling states, "deeply entrenched in the whole plot"; the writer prefers to let themes "grow organically", rather than sitting down and consciously attempting to impart such ideas to her readers. Along the same lines is the ever-present theme of adolescence, in whose depiction Rowling has been purposeful in acknowledging her characters' sexualities and not leaving Harry, as she put it, "stuck in a state of permanent pre-pubescence".
Rowling said that, to her, the moral significance of the tales seems "blindingly obvious." The key for her was the choice between what is right and what is easy, "because that, that's how
tyranny is started, with people being
apathetic and taking the easy route and suddenly finding themselves in deep trouble."
Achievements
Cultural impact
Since the publishing of
The Philosopher's Stone, a number of societal trends have been attributed to the series.
The
Harry Potter books have gained recognition for sparking an interest in reading among the young at a time when children were thought to be abandoning the book for the computer and the television, though the series' overall impact on children's reading habits has been questioned. US
National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia said in 2007 "God bless Harry Potter, and please send us many more. But one book or series of books isn't strong enough to counterbalance the trends" of declining youth readership. Charlie Griffiths, director of the UK's National Literacy Association, said "Anyone who can persuade children to read should be treasured and what Rowling has given us in
Harry Potter is little short of miraculous," and now-British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown said as Chancellor "I think JK Rowling has done more for literacy around the world than any single human being."
The series has also garnered a large following of fans. So eager were these fans for the latest series release that bookstores around the world began holding events to coincide with the midnight release of the books, beginning with the 2000 publication of
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The events, commonly featuring mock sorting, games, face painting, and other live entertainment have achieved popularity with Potter fans and have been incredibly successful at attracting fans and selling books with nearly nine million of the 10.8 million initial print copies of
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold in the first 24 hours. Among this large base of
fans are a minority of "super-fans", similar to the
Trekkies of the
Star Trek fandom. Besides meeting online through
blogs,
podcasts, and
fansites,
Harry Potter super-fans can also meet at
Harry Potter symposia. These events draw people from around the world to attend lectures, discussions and a host of other
Potter themed activities.
The
Harry Potter books have inspired the "
wizard rock" movement, where a number of bands were formed whose names, image and song lyrics relate to the
Harry Potter world. Examples include
Harry and the Potters and
The Cruciatus Curse.
Harry Potter has also brought changes in the publishing world, one of the most noted being the reformation of the
New York Times Best Seller list. The change came immediately preceding the release of
Goblet of Fire in 2000 when publishers complained of the number of slots on the list being held by
Harry Potter and other children's books. The Times subsequently created a separate children's list for
Harry Potter and other children's literature.
The word
muggle has spread beyond its
Harry Potter origins, used by many groups to indicate those who are not aware or are lacking in some skill. In 2003, "muggle", entered the
Oxford English Dictionary with that definition.
There is an accredited course at
California State University, Bakersfield devoted to the literature of Harry Potter titled "The World of Harry Potter."
Awards and honours
J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series have been the recipients of a host of awards since the initial publication of
Philosopher's Stone including four Whitaker Platinum Book Awards (all of which were awarded in 2001), three
Nestlé Smarties Book Prizes (1997–1999), two
Scottish Arts Council Book Awards (1999 and 2001), the inaugural
Whitbread children's book of the year award, (1999), the
WHSmith book of the year (2006), among others. In 2000,
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was nominated for Best Novel in the
Hugo Awards while in 2001,
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire won said award. Honours include a commendation for the
Carnegie Medal (1997), a short listing for the Guardian Children's Award (1998), and numerous listings on the notable books, editors' Choices, and best books lists of the
American Library Association,
New York Times,
Chicago Public Library, and
Publishers Weekly.
Commercial success
In November 2007, the magazine
Advertising Age estimated the total value of the
Harry Potter brand at roughly $15 billion (£7 billion). The popularity of the
Harry Potter series has translated into substantial financial success for Rowling, her publishers, and other
Harry Potter related license holders. This success has made Rowling the first and thus far only
billionaire author. The books have sold over 375 million copies worldwide and have also given rise to the popular film adaptations produced by
Warner Bros., all of which have been successful in their own right with the first,
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, ranking number four on the
inflation-unadjusted list of all-time highest grossing films and the other four
Harry Potter films each ranking in the top 20. The films have in turn spawned five video games and have in conjunction with them led to the licensing of over 400 additional Harry Potter products (including an
iPod) that have,
as of July 2005, made the Harry Potter brand worth an estimated 4 billion US dollars and J.K. Rowling a
US dollar billionaire, making her, by some reports, richer than
Queen Elizabeth II, however, Rowling has stated that this is false.
On
12 April,
2007,
Barnes & Noble declared that
Deathly Hallows has broken its pre-order record, with over 500,000 copies pre-ordered through its site.
A
Maine bookseller said she'd to sign a legal form stating that she wouldn't open the boxes of
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince until their official release date at midnight, and that she'd cover the boxes with blankets in her back room so they wouldn't be seen. For the release of
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, extra security was added by limiting the number of librarians who handle the book prior to its release. Those who failed to comply with the written agreement, which employees were required to sign, would jeopardise those libraries' access to "future embargoed titles." Prior to the release of
Deathly Hallows, the
BBC reported that some booksellers and libraries may have been tempted to break the embargo for publicity, as there were no future
Potter books to be banned from selling.
For the release of
Goblet of Fire, 9000
FedEx trucks were used with no other purpose than to deliver the book. Together, Amazon.com and
Barnes & Noble pre-sold more than 700,000 copies of the book. 6.9 million copies of
Prince were sold in the U.S. within the first 24 hours of its release; in the
United Kingdom more than two million copies were sold on the first day. The initial print run for
Deathly Hallows was 12 million copies, and over a million were pre-ordered through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Others have claimed that sales of the Harry Potter books have not been highly profitable for book retailers. Intense competition to offer the best price on the popular novels has whittled away expected revenue. The suggested retail for
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was $35 but Amazon.com offered the book at a discounted price of $18, with other major chains following suit to remain competitive. Some hope that the frenzy associated with the book will create sales of other items when customers are drawn to bookstores. Other small, independent sellers have tried to protect revenues necessary to keep them in business by selling the book at the suggested cover price but offering other "add-on" items like Potter memorabilia or coupons towards other purchases.
Criticism, praise, and controversy
Literary criticism
Early in its history,
Harry Potter received overwhelmingly positive reviews, which helped the series to quickly grow a large readership. Upon its publication, the first volume,
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was greatly praised by most of Britain's major newspapers:
The Mail on Sunday rated it as "the most imaginative debut since
Roald Dahl"; a view echoed by the
Sunday Times ("comparisons to Dahl are, this time, justified"), while
The Guardian called it "a richly textured novel given lift-off by an inventive wit" and
The Scotsman said it had "all the makings of a classic".
By the time of the release of the fifth volume,
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the books began to receive strong criticism from a number of literary scholars.
Yale professor,
literary scholar and
critic Harold Bloom raised pungent criticisms of the books' literary merits, saying, “Rowling's mind is so governed by clichés and dead metaphors that she's no other style of writing."
A. S. Byatt authored a
New York Times op-ed article calling Rowling's universe a “
secondary world, made up of intelligently patchworked derivative motifs from all sorts of
children's literature … written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip".
The critic
Anthony Holden wrote in
The Observer on his experience of judging
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the
1999 Whitbread Awards. His overall view of the series was very negative—"the Potter saga was essentially patronising, very conservative, highly derivative, dispiritingly nostalgic for a bygone Britain," and he speaks of "pedestrian, ungrammatical prose style."
By contrast, author
Fay Weldon, while admitting that the series is "not what the poets hoped for," nevertheless goes on to say, "but this isn't poetry, it's readable, saleable, everyday, useful prose". The literary critic A.N. Wilson praised the Harry Potter series in 'The Times', stating: "There are not many writers who have JK’s Dickensian ability to make us turn the pages, to weep – openly, with tears splashing – and a few pages later to laugh, at invariably good jokes…We have lived through a decade in which we've followed the publication of the liveliest, funniest, scariest and most moving children’s stories ever written." Charles Taylor of
Salon.com, who is primarily a movie critic, took issue with Byatt's criticisms in particular. While he conceded that she may have "a valid cultural point—a teeny one—about the impulses that drive us to reassuring pop trash and away from the troubling complexities of art", he rejected her claims that the series is lacking in serious literary merit and that it owes its success merely to the childhood reassurances it offers. Taylor stressed the progressively darker tone of the books, shown by the murder of a classmate and close friend and the psychological wounds and social isolation each causes. Taylor also pointed out that
Philosopher's Stone, said to be the most lighthearted of the seven published books, disrupts the childhood reassurances that Byatt claims spur the series' success: the book opens with news of a double murder, for example.
Stephen King called the series "a feat of which only a superior imagination is capable," and declared "Rowling's punning, one-eyebrow-cocked sense of humor" to be "remarkable." However, he wrote that despite the story being "a good one," he's "a little tired of discovering Harry at home with his horrible aunt and uncle," the formulaic beginning of all seven books. King has also joked that "
Rowling's never met an
adverb she didn't like!" He does however predict that Harry Potter "will indeed stand time's test and wind up on a shelf where only the best are kept; I think Harry will take his place with
Alice,
Huck,
Frodo, and
Dorothy and this is one series not just for the decade, but for the ages."
Orson Scott Card wrote a review of
Deathly Hallows in which he said, "J.K. Rowling has created something that . . . deserves to last, to become a permanent classic of English literature, and not just as 'children's fiction.'" Tina Jordan of
Entertainment Weekly called
Deathly Hallows "stunningly beautiful" and predicted that "these books are going to be on my grandchildren's shelves, and my great-grandchildren's, and maybe even further down the line than that."
A
Telegraph review of
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and of the series as a whole, observed that Rowling's success was entirely self-made and not due to hype of her books by the publishing world, which has instead followed in her wake.
The books have also spawned studies investigating the saga's literary merit. One collaboration by a number of critics is
The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter. In this volume, Amanda Cockrell concludes, "Harry Potter isn't the lightweight imitation of such serious high fantasy as
A Wizard of Earthsea or
The Lord of the Rings, but a legitimate descendant of the darker and more complicated school story," and suggests that "we need to take a deeper look into Harry Potter, who is deeper than we think." She points to Rudyard Kipling, C.S. Lewis, Jill Murphy, Anthony Horowitz, Diana Wynne Jones, Thomas Hughes, Roald Dahl, and others as legitimate literary predecessors to the Harry Potter saga. Lana A. Whithead, editor of the book, notes that Rowling "appears to be very seriously attempting a literary achievement."
John Granger, a conservative
Orthodox Christian and English Literature professor at Peninsula College, writes that the "Harry Potter books are classics—and not just 'kid-lit' but as classics of world literature," and believes the books carry a "mother-lode" of deeper literary and symbolic meaning than meets the eye.
Cultural criticism
Although
Time magazine named Rowling as a runner-up for its 2007
Person of the Year award, noting the social, moral, and
political inspiration she's given
her fandom, cultural criticisms of the series have been mixed.
Washington Post book critic Ron Charles opined in July 2007 that the large numbers of adults reading the
Potter series but few other books may represent a "bad case of cultural infantilism", and that the straightforward "good vs. evil" theme of the series is "childish." He also argued that "through no fault of Rowling's," the cultural and marketing "hysteria" marked by the publication of the later books "trains children and adults to expect the roar of the coliseum, a mass-media experience that no other novel can possibly provide."
Jenny Sawyer wrote in the
July 25,
2007 Christian Science Monitor that the books represent a "disturbing trend in commercial storytelling and Western society" in that stories "moral center
have all but vanished from much of today's pop culture.... after 10 years, 4,195 pages, and over 375 million copies, J.K. Rowling's towering achievement lacks the cornerstone of almost all great children's literature: the hero's moral journey." Harry Potter, Sawyer argues, neither faces a "moral struggle" nor undergoes any ethical growth, and is thus "no guide in circumstances in which right and wrong are anything less than black and white."
Chris Suellentrop made a similar argument in a
November 8,
2002 Slate Magazine article, likening Potter to a "a trust-fund kid whose success at
school is largely attributable to the gifts his friends and relatives lavish upon him." Noting that in Rowling's fiction, magical ability potential is "something you're born to, not something you can achieve", Suellentrop wrote that Dumbledore's maxim that "It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities" is hypocritical, as "the school that Dumbledore runs values native gifts above all else." In an
August 12,
2007 New York Times review of
The Deathly Hallows, however,
Christopher Hitchens praised Rowling for "unmooring" her "English school story" from literary precedents "bound up with dreams of wealth and class and snobbery", arguing that she'd instead created "a world of youthful democracy and diversity".
Controversies
The books have been the subject of a number of legal proceedings, largely stemming either from claims by American Christian groups that the magic in the books promotes witchcraft among children, or from various conflicts over copyright and trademark infringements.
The series' immense popularity and high market value has led Rowling, her publishers, and film distributor
Warner Bros. to take legal measures to protect their copyright, which have included banning the sale of
Harry Potter imitations, targeting the owners of websites over the "Harry Potter" domain name, and suing author
Nancy Stouffer to counter her accusations that Rowling had plagiarised her work.
Various religious conservatives have claimed that the books promote witchcraft and are therefore unsuitable for children, while a number of critics have criticised the books for promoting various political agendas. Her revelation that the character
Dumbledore was homosexual has increased the political controversies surrounding the series.
Other media
Films
In 1999, Rowling sold the film rights to the first four
Harry Potter books to
Warner Bros. for a reported
£1 million (US$1,982,900). A demand Rowling made was that the principal cast be kept strictly British, nonetheless allowing for the inclusion of many Irish actors such as the late
Richard Harris as Dumbledore, and for casting of French and Eastern European actors in
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where characters from the book are specified as such. After considering many directors such as
Steven Spielberg,
Terry Gilliam,
Jonathan Demme, and
Alan Parker, on
March 28,
2000,
Chris Columbus was appointed as director for
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (titled "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in the United States), with Warner Bros. citing his work on other family films such as
Home Alone and
Mrs. Doubtfire as influences for their decision. After
extensive casting, filming began in October 2000 at
Leavesden Film Studios and in
London itself, with production ending in July 2001.
Philosopher's Stone was released on
November 16,
2001.
Just three days after
Philosopher's Stone's release, production for
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, also directed by Columbus, began, finishing in Summer 2002. The film was released on
November 15,
2002.
Chris Columbus declined to direct
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, only acting as
producer.
Mexican director
Alfonso Cuarón took over the job, and after shooting in 2003, the film was released on
June 4,
2004. Due to the fourth film beginning its production before the third's release,
Mike Newell was chosen as the director for
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, released on
November 18,
2005. Newell declined to direct the next movie, and British TV director
David Yates was chosen for
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which began production on January 2006, and was released on
July 11,
2007. Yates is confirmed to direct
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, for release on
November 21,
2008. In March 2008, Warner Bros. announced that the final instalment of the series,
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, would be filmed in two segments, with part one released in November 2010 and part two released in May 2011. Yates would again return to direct both films.
The
Harry Potter films were huge
box office hits, with all five on the
50 highest-grossing films worldwide.
Games
Electronic Arts has so far released seven
video games movies based on the books and movies storylines,
Philosopher's Stone,
Chamber of Secrets,
Prisoner of Azkaban,
Goblet of Fire, and
Order of the Phoenix was another franchise EA had created, they however made only two games based on the first two books which were released to coincide with the release of the movies. EA also produced a
Quidditch simulation game,, released in 2003.
Theme park
On
31 May,
2007 Warner Bros.,
Universal Studios and
Leavesden Film Studios announced that a
Harry Potter area will be built in
Orlando, Florida at
Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure. The announcement described "
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" as "the world's first immersive Harry Potter themed environment." According to the Warner Bros. press release, the section is "Expected to open in late 2009. The new environment will feature immersive rides and interactive attractions, as well as experimental shops and restaurants;." In an online announcement it was revealed that plans have been in place for over a year and a half; with contributions from
J.K. Rowling and
Stuart Craig.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Harry Potter'.
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