The Making of the Potterverse (10 page)

The grounds of Alnwick Castle were where the first-year Gryffindors learned to fly in
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
(Fionna Boyle)

J.K. Rowling was among those honored at the Whitaker Gold and Platinum Book Awards because her novels had been such an enormous presence on the bestseller lists over the previous four years.

Britain’s toy store chain The Entertainer announced that they would not be carrying Harry Potter merchandise for fear it would attract children to the world of the occult. As silly as it may seem, this was just the latest in a wide-ranging, and long-running, controversy both in America and abroad concerning whether or not there was a darker subtext to the Harry Potter novels that celebrated evil over good. In the end, of course, the
vast
majority of people believed the opposite to be true.

British undergraduate student Michele Fry saw her thesis —
Heroes and Heroines: Myth and Gender Roles in the Harry Potter Books —
published in an academic journal. Noted Fry, “Most critics argue Hermione is an accessory, but I would say she is the real power behind Harry Potter. Without her, he could not beat the evil villain Voldemort.”

Corporate tie-ins for
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
had to be handled gingerly, as J.K. Rowling did not want her creation to be overly exploited. As a result, Coca-Cola’s $150 million deal allowed them to put Harry Potter “imagery” on its products
without
utilizing photos of the film’s cast. One part of the promotional program was for Coca-Cola to donate $18 million to the Reading Is Fundamental program in the United States, which encourages literacy in children. Coca-Cola consultant Manny Goldman pointed out that “Harry Potter is the right direction to take. Coca-Cola is supposed to be about something special and this is something special.”

George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic was awarded the effects job for
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
.

Returning director Chris Columbus told the media that filming had already begun on the second film, even though the first hadn’t even reached theaters yet.

Among the merchandise manufacturers tying into the first film were Lego, Mattel, Tiger Electronics and Electronic Arts.

In a bid to raise money for the MS Society of Scotland, the
QXL
Web site auctioned off a dozen tickets to the preview screening of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
.

Actor Kenneth Branagh was announced to play Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
. Offered Chris Columbus, “Ken is one of the great stage and screen actors of our time, and a great filmmaker. He’s a perfect fit for our all-British ensemble, and he’s one of the few younger actors who can hold his own against the likes of Richard Harris, Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman. I couldn’t conceive of anyone else playing Gilderoy Lockhart.” David Heyman elaborated, “Lockhart is amongst the most challenging roles in either of the two films. We needed someone who could be both annoying and charming, who would embrace Lockhart’s narcissism, be hysterically funny, and still keep him grounded in reality.”

Kenneth Branagh shared his feelings about being cast in the film: “It was nerve-wracking, because I was aware that
Chamber of Secrets
is a major film with huge audience expectations and that fans already had a very established idea of who Lockhart is. He’s very flamboyant, rather vain and terribly narcissistic. So he’s a delicious character to play, ferociously irritating and charming, but we had to convince audiences that he could have done all the things he claims. We had to make him plausible. I trusted Chris Columbus and his comic timing implicitly.”

Detroit’s Star Theatres announced that they would have a gala premiere on November 16, the proceeds of which would go to benefit the Food Bank of Oakland County and Gleaners Community Food Bank.

Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans offered up 38 flavors of jelly beans tied in to
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
, among them sardine,
horseradish and booger. The company’s
VP
Deirdre Gonzalez stated, “There was some serious consideration given to the bodily fluid flavors. We thought, at the end of the day, do we really want to do that? [But] the people who read [the books] want to live in Harry’s world. They want to be Harry Potter. Bertie Bott’s are the only artificial product on the market. They’re exactly what Harry Potter would be tasting if he were a real person.”

Some skeptics voiced concern about
Sorcerer
’s running time of 152 minutes, but Dan Jolin of
Total Film
magazine philosophically offered, “A hundred million people in the world have read these books and loved them, and there’s a sense of the longer, the better, even for children.”

Reuters reported that props stolen from the set of the Harry Potter films were beginning to show up on eBay.

According to
USA Today
, advance ticket sales for the first Harry film were phenomenal. The newspaper quoted www.fandango. com’s John Singh as saying, “There is Harry Potter mania everywhere. It’s 15 days before the movie opens, and we’re seeing the kind of volume we would normally see
one
day before a blockbuster opens.”

In an article appearing in
USA Today
, it was revealed that
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
was produced at a cost of $125 million, its running time would be two hours and thirty-three minutes,
the film would be dubbed in 24 languages and subtitled in 16 more, it would open on over 4,000 screens in the United States and Canada, and almost simultaneously in 130 different countries.

Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint at the premiere of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
(Gregory Pace/Corbis)

Rumors that Daniel Radcliffe’s voice broke during filming, thus requiring dubbing from a soundalike, were denied by Warner Brothers.

The London premiere of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
was a
major
success, with thousands of fans turning out alongside the red carpet at London’s Leicester Square. Numerous stars from film and music attended the event.

Some interesting “rules” governing the Harry Potter films came to light. According to the
Los Angeles Times
, “The Harry Potter rules dictated that all partners had to know the books and follow them faithfully, could not base any products or advertising on future books, and had to always spread the gospel of Harry by drawing
new consumers to his world. One guideline specifically stated that products should be ‘artifacts rather than souvenirs,’ when possible, i.e., if it’s a broomstick, it should look like one Harry and his friends ride on while playing Quidditch.”

According to some sources, one of the offshoots of Pottermania was the fact that numerous children began requesting eyeglasses that looked like the young wizard’s.

The media had a field day depicting
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
and Peter Jackson’s
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
as arch rivals. According to Jackson himself, nothing could be further from the truth. “Everybody paints this sort of competition between
Harry Potter
and the
Lord of the Rings
. It’s sort of crazy, because I just wish
Harry Potter
all the best and I’m sure it’ll be great. I’m a huge fan of the books, so I’m looking forward to it.”

Not surprisingly, all four Harry Potter novels jumped to the top of the UK bestseller lists shortly before the release of the film version of
Sorcerer’s Stone
. Actually, the top five slots were all held by J.K. Rowling’s creation, one of them being the movie tie-in version of the first novel. Bloomsbury Publishing enthused, “It is wonderful news and we are just delighted. It is quite funny to have the top five spots, considering there are only four Harry Potter stories so far. We couldn’t have wished for better publicity from the film. Now people are rushing back to the bookshops to read the book first.”

NBC
aired a one-hour special entitled
Harry Potter: Behind the Magic,
a behind-the-scenes look at the film and its special effects.

Early in the process of shooting
Chamber of Secrets
, director Chris Columbus mentioned that he might be interested in shooting all seven Harry Potter films. Ultimately, though, he would decide
that two was enough, in order to prevent further separation from his family.

At the premiere of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
in L.A., actors dressed as characters from the film greeted people on their way into the theater. (Frank Trapper/Corbis)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
opened to very positive reviews, though some complained that it followed the novel too closely and, for a film, that made for uneven pacing. Nonetheless, the film quickly went on to become a box office blockbuster all around the world. The film was made for $125 million. It had an opening domestic box office weekend gross of $90,294,621. It’s total domestic gross was $317,575,550 and its foreign gross was $658,900,000, with a total worldwide gross of $976,475,550.