Rowling names last book in Potter saga
British author J.K. Rowling revealed on Thursday that the long-awaited seventh and final book in her wizard saga will be called "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," sparking the next phase of Pottermania.
Fans of the series that has already sold an estimated 300 million copies worldwide were kept guessing with the publication date not set -- although that did not stop one U.S. bookseller from starting to take reservations.
The intriguing and ominous title had Potter aficionados puzzling over what might happen to the bespectacled hero.
"Will a favorite character die? Could Harry himself face a grisly demise? How will it all end?" asked Sam Harrison, children's buyer at the British bookchain Waterstone's.
"But surely the question all Potter fans will want answering as soon as possible is -- when can they get their hands on a copy?"
Rowling, whose creation has turned her into one of the world's richest and most successful authors, revealed on her Web site this week "I'm now writing scenes that have been planned, in some cases, for a dozen years or even more."
"I am alternately elated and overwrought. I both want, and don't want, to finish this book (don't worry, I will)."
She said in the diary entry on her official Web site (www.jkrowling.com) that Potter had now inveigled his way into her dreams.
"For years now, people have asked me whether I ever dream that I am 'in' Harry's world," Rowling wrote. "The answer was 'no' until a few nights ago when I had an epic dream in which I was, simultaneously, Harry and the narrator."
But she gave no clues as to what will happen at the end of the upcoming book, amid speculation that some of the characters, possibly Harry himself, will die.
NO DATE SET
The Potter books have a huge influence on the financial results of their U.S. and British publishers, Scholastic and Bloomsbury.
Though it published the paperback edition of the sixth book this year, Bloomsbury warned on December 11 that profits could widely miss analysts' forecasts because of sluggish pre-Christmas book sales and other factors. This wiped out nearly one-third of its market capitalization.
Kyle Good, spokeswoman for Rowling's U.S publisher Scholastic Corp., said they had not received a date for when they would receive the manuscript nor when the book would be published.
Rowling's last novel, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," was her most successful book in the U.S., she said, selling 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours.
But despite uncertainty over the publication date, book retailer Borders said it had started taking reservations for the seventh book on December8 and on Thursday e-mailed a link to its customers to sign up for e-mail notification when the book can be reserved online.
"Anticipation for this book has been building since the sixth book was released in 2005," said Borders Senior Vice President Linda Jones in a statement. "We are sensing real excitement from our customers."
Final Harry Potter Book Due Out in July
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the last of seven installments of the boy wizard's adventures, will be published July 21, author J.K. Rowling said Thursday.
Rowling announced the publication date on her Web site.
Bloomsbury, her British publisher, said it would publish a children's hardback edition, an adult hardback, a special gift edition and an audio book on the same day.
Scholastic Children's Books, the U.S. publisher, said it would offer a hardback edition at a suggested retail price of $34.99, a deluxe edition at $65.00 and a reinforced library edition at $39.99.
Bloomsbury noted that this year is the 10th anniversary of the publication of the first "Harry Potter" book in the phenomenally successful series.
The "Potter" books have sold 325 million copies worldwide and been translated into 64 languages, Bloomsbury said.
The last book, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," sold 2,009,574 copies in Britain on the first day of its release, Bloomsbury said.
The Potter franchise is so important to the company's earnings that it announced the publication to the London Stock Exchange.
Bloomsbury shares were up 2.2 percent to $4.40 after the announcement.
'Harry Potter' In Rob Zombie's Hands? 'Very Violent With A Lot Of Nudity'
Zack Snyder, David Fincher and more directors weigh in on what they'd do with final 'Potter' flick.
Source: MTV
Is the revolving door done spinning?
After the first two "Harry Potter" films, it appeared there would be a different director for each subsequent flick — with Alfonso Cuarón, Mike Newell and then David Yates stepping in to expand on the world Chris Columbus first created onscreen.
But now that Yates — who helmed the forthcoming "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" — has signed on to return for "Half-Blood Prince", that leaves only one slot left if the franchise passes the wand yet again.
While it's anyone's guess whether one of the previous directors will finish the series off, we wonder — what if someone new came aboard? What would the final film look like if, say, Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton were heading it up? Since the Potter-verse offers so many possibilities, we've asked this question before, with varying results, and we're still asking. Here's our latest batch of answers:
Rob Zombie ("Halloween"): "I'd probably be very violent with a lot of nudity. That's what it needs. Harry should say 'f---' a lot. That would spice it up."
Zack Snyder ("300"): "The problem with Harry Potter is that you can't do it different from the books. Do you want to see them having sex or shooting each other or fighting? Sure. My knee-jerk reaction is to just make everything an R-rated movie, and so I'm like, 'They should be darker!' you know? I do kind of feel they're going in the right direction. They've been sort of growing the films with the characters. So the films are getting darker and intense as the kids have been getting older. I think that makes sense. And it'd be awesome [if Harry dies in the end]."
David Fincher ("Zodiac"): "Could I make it darker than Alfonso's? I don't know. [Should Harry die?] As all good teenagers must."
George Miller ("Happy Feet"): "The thing that struck me, thinking back to the '60s and '70s, is that at the end of every really popular movie, the heroes or the protagonists died in some way. From 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,' 'Bonnie and Clyde' ... the last movie that did that seems to have been 'Thelma & Louise.' If you really look back, there's so many movies where it was just OK for the main characters to die. It was just part of what was happening. I still don't understand what that was, whether there was a kind of fatalism that came in the '60s as a result of the Vietnam War, I have no idea. It'd be interesting — and bold — [if Harry dies in the end]. Then it would be like that has come a full life cycle."
Tom Tykwer ("Perfume"): "What I like about the 'Harry Potter' series is, the older Harry gets, the more scary the movies are, and I think I would push for the scary parts more than what has been done. It's getting there. I'm curious how far they're daring to go there."
Edgar Wright ("Hot Fuzz"): "I think I'd like to see Daniel Radcliffe naked and mutilating horses [like he did in the play 'Equus' in London's West End]. It's amazing in the U.K., the poster outside the theater is absolutely enormous. It's crazy. It's three stories high — a picture of Daniel Radcliffe with his shirt off. It's quite distressing."
Edward Zwick ("Blood Diamond"): "At the time of the first 'Harry Potter,' I think my first daughter was 8 or 9 and I was reading it to her. I certainly would have known what to do with that. That would have been fun. She would have been very happy had I done it, trust me. But now? I don't know. I think it was wonderful when I saw Cuarón's third episode of it. I think he reinvented it. He did a really great job. I'm not sure I'd want to be the fifth director, though."
Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth"): "I actually got offered the third one, before Alfonso, and I actually asked the question, 'What about Alfonso?' Because I thought he was perfect for it. I really love the books, they're incredibly rich and textured, incredibly well-informed and -researched, and I think they have a very dark universe — it's actually darker than the movies have been, up until Alfonso came onboard. Now they have a darker tone. I would hope that he would return, because out of all the movies that I've seen, that have been released, his is the one that I've liked the most. I would love for him to come back into that universe. I hope he gets to play in it again. [If he doesn't,] I would love to do one, but I would love to do one where I can kill off one of the characters. I would love to kill off one of them. I would like to be the guy who ends the franchise — I come in and destroy everything that everyone else has created! [He laughs.]
They forgot to ask Malick and Bergman.
That's a pretty pointless article. They might as well ask Woody Allen who will make them all Jewish and neurotic and move the setting from England to New York, or David Lynch who will throw in some red velvet rooms and create a series of detached vignettes with any number of characters from Albania, and let you figure out what the movie means. I mean, really.
David Fincher wins the article.
guillermo del toro simultaneously wins and loses for passing on the third one to cuaron.
Last 'Potter' to be split in half
Warner to make two films from final 'Harry'
Source: Variety
Warner Bros. will split the last "Harry Potter" tome into a two-part film, with the installments unspooling six months apart.
David Yates will direct and Steve Kloves will write both parts, which will be filmed concurrently.
Part one of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will bow in November 2010, with the second to debut the following May.
The unusual "Kill Bill" strategy solves a thorny problem for the studio, which had been wrestling with a way to adapt J.K. Rowling's hefty tome and successfully conclude its lucrative franchise, which has generated $4.5 billion at the worldwide B.O. It's not yet clear exactly how studio will split the 784-page book, however.
Warner Bros. prexy Alan Horn and Jeff Robinov, prexy of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, are expected to discuss their plans for "Deathly Hallows" during the studio's ShoWest presentation at 2:45 p.m. today.
"Deathly Hallows," the seventh in the series, is weighty in more ways than one: The boy wizard and his pals battle archnemesis Voldemort to the death. Tome sold a record 11 million copies during the first 24 hours after it hit bookshelves last July.
The sixth movie in the franchise, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," debuts on the bigscreen in November. It is also being directed by Yates, who helmed the fifth installment, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Kloves has also been a steady presence for the franchise; he will have written seven of the eight adaptations, having missed only "Order of the Phoenix."
David Heyman has served as producer on the entire series, which last year surpassed James Bond as the top-grossing film franchise (Daily Variety, Sept. 11). Franchise has also proved lucrative on DVD and in other ancillary markets; among other ventures, Warner and Universal have partnered on a theme park attraction devoted to "Potter."
Has Cuaron passed on doing any further sequels, or have they just never bothered to ask him? Because, so far, his is the only one that has kept my interest for a period longer than forty minutes.
That last one, Harry Potter and The Three Hours of Exposition, was skull-throbbingly dull.
Trailer here. (http://movies.yahoo.com/premieres/20590295/standardformat)
Loved it. It actually looks appropriately epic as fuck.
there should be an asterisk after any mention of 3D* in a trailer or poster to alert the viewer when a movie is still best seen in 2D. like this:
*3D conversion was only an afterthought.
like clash of the who?tans, alice in who?land and just about every other 3D release this year. right?
(ignoring that those movies were the worst in any D)
New Trailer here. (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810004780/video/22060274)
Warner Bros. cancels 3D for 'Potter' pic
'Deathly Hallows Part 2' will open in 3D
Source: Variety
Warner has canceled the 3D on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1"
Studio statement says "Despite everyone's best efforts, we were unable to convert the film in its entirety and meet the highest standards of quality."
Pic will be released in conventional 2D and Imax.
Statement said the final installment, "Deathly Hallows Part 2," will be in 3D.
Warner had announced the pic would be in 3D and rumors had the conversion job going to Imax, which had never converted an entire feature.
i have no idea of what the fuck i just saw, but it was pretty spectacular.
Was it a film?! Did it look like it was being projected on a screen? Was there a young man wearing circular glasses!?
Did Harry Pikachu avenge the death of Jigglypoof???
i've never been into the harry potter, the cuaron movie being the exception because he's mexican and i have to be supportive of my comrades (it's not a choice, it's in the mexican constitution), but this one had the most interesting production design and a really cool cast. i also liked the cinematography. nice to open a movie with a close up shot of bill nighy being all nighyesque. i dunno, i saw harry potter six when it came out and i remember nothing about it. no interesting story points or shots or setpieces or anything. this one had a terry gilliam vibe (non boring gilliam mode) , and a lot sequences that work as really kickass stand-alone scenes, which is the reason why i enjoyed it because i have no idea what a holcrux is.
the dialogue is crap, but from what i've seen, jk rowling is extremely good at building suspense and moving the story forward.
and it has a nick cave song in it, which i'm sure a lot of people will add to their itunes and ipods, granting them the right to say that they like nick cave. i still haven't decided how i feel about that. as a hipster, i guess it's my duty to nag and complain, but as a world class citizen, i guess it's an improvement in cultural openness that the biggest movie of the season has a very important scene with music by a badass of that caliber. in the end, serious people won't care.
discuss.
I tried to read the books once and gave up after fifteen minutes. I've somewhat enjoyed all the movies, notably 3, 5, and 6, but I will never in a million years understand the people who get obsessed with it. It's such a hodgepodge, and just from a storytelling perspective it fails on every level of providing a logically consistent story-world. Character motivations come and go like silent farts, and there's always... ALWAYS... the deus ex machina that pops up to save the day and is then summarily forgotten. I do give David Yates a lot of credit for single-handedly giving the last couple movies the illusion of gravitas, and I expect these final two will be much the same. Whenever they eventually show up on Netflix Instant, I'll get around to watching them.
No really, how far did you make it into the books? The books are really good, and her world is very intricately detailed. I think you should try again.
he gave up after fifteen minutes...
I'm basically over it at this point. I'm perfectly happy to go through life not having read them. Especially when there are so many great books out there that I actually feel guilty about not reading.
I've never read the books and I never will, probably. I don't see the point. The films, with the exception of half blood prince, have all been pretty great. (i disliked part 5 when I saw on the cinema but second viewing made me realize i was probably just bored with hollywood when that happened). They have never pretended to be high art yet they are certainly above average in every respect. the main characters grow on you, and you have all those British great actors hammering away, having a lot of fun with the material. the craft is top notch. i don't know, i understand if you get all self righteous there's a lot to complain. but no one said this is there will be blood. I wish most "kids" films were this good.
This film in particular does a very weird/interesting/risky structural thing, where it starts with a bang and keeps that speed for more than an hour and then bam, it's all silence and conversations and people thinking and getting lost and angry and not knowing what they're doing. It's pretty interesting because most films would never attempt this. Is not done in a completely successfull way. I think a more powerful director might have done better. But again, it has a lot of brilliant stylistic flourishes as the one crono mentions. that first shot is pretty cool, the one with the nick cave song also, there's a lot of moments that feel inspired and give the film and story a more epic feel to it. the main actors have grown and got better at this, particularly Radcliffe. i think he's the one who will make the most interesting choices in the future.
All in all I don't see what's to complain here. We're lucky to have films like these made with such care and energy, specially when the trailers on my showing were of crap like Tron and whatnot, films that seem to be written by a robot.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tumblr.com%2Ftumblr_lc8u9idKTV1qzptin.jpg&hash=627dd209b5fb3a6b016853190d33736e17d12539)
from my blog (http://modage.tumblr.com/post/2186704797/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-1):
Though I've never read a Harry Potter book, I've been a fan of pretty much all of the films. It's been great getting to see the stories get darker as the audience grows older. I really have to give Warner Bros. credit for doing such an amazing job with the franchise. Can you think of any other film in history that was any good after the 3rd or 4th? And that's just when the Harry Potter films were beginning to ramp up. Now we're on the 7th film, which is the series darkest yet. I really enjoyed the "sex, drugs and wizardry" of the last film, Half-Blood Prince and those more mature elements are carried over here. (An awkward dance to Nick Cave's "O Children" is a definite highlight.)
It's also interesting to see the characters on the run, after so many years in the fantastical confines of Hogwarts, it's even more surreal to see them strolling through London. (Hey, I've been there!) My only real gripe with the series is that each film feels like a chapter in a larger book. And never is that more true than in this film which has halved the final book into 2 installments. Without having read the books it's hard to say how much there is left to tell, but it'll be exciting to finally get some closure to the story so it's individual pieces can be admired more in retrospect.
You'd have to pay me a hundred bucks at least to pretend reading Harry Potter in public. Maybe 50ish to watch one in a theater.
Maybe 250 to pretend for a whole night to people I respect that I love Harry Potter.
If these fees interest you, you can paypal me at pbg82 at hotmail dot com
Part 2 Trailer here. (http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/harrypotterandthedeathlyhallowspart2/)