The Making of the Potterverse (14 page)

Addressing children at the Guardian Hay festival, a Warner Brothers executive let slip how they make Hagrid a giant. According to Tanya Seghatchian, there are two Hagrids (one a stand-in), and two sets, one smaller than the other, to create the illusion.

Forty-one-year-old Melissa Kumsuk Cho was deported from the United Kingdom once it was confirmed that she had been stalking J.K. Rowling.

The official announcement was made that Alfonso Cuaron would be directing film number three,
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
, with Chris Columbus taking on the role of producer. Said Cuaron, “I am so pleased to be entrusted with presenting the continuing Harry Potter saga. It has captured the imagination of so many people, myself included, and I am so excited to join an amazingly talented cast and crew.”

It was a quiet month in the Potterverse, except that J.K. Rowling was battling with her neighbors. For reasons of security, she wanted to increase the height of the walls around her estate. Ultimately, Rowling got her way.

Some people in the media worried that Daniel Radcliffe was aging too quickly to keep playing Harry Potter. Noted the
Sunday Mail
, “He may be getting too big for his broomstick. Daniel Radcliffe, who played the boy wizard in the film
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
last year, appears to be outgrowing the role. Seen walking to a gym near their home in southwest London, 13-year-old Daniel is easily taller than his mother Marcia Gresham.... Filming of the second J.K. Rowling adventure,
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
, was rushed through after the first movie to reduce the risk of any of the child actors growing up too much. If Daniel’s dizzy rise continues at the same rate, director Christopher Columbus may be forced to look for a replacement wizard for future Potter films.”

While filming
Chamber of Secrets
, Chris Columbus gave an interview in which he stated, “What’s great about the books is they’re not really sequels, they’re individual stories about the next year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. So as a result, you get to examine each of the characters as they continue to grow. This time around, the kids are starting to experience those first feelings of adolescence and developing small little crushes here and there. The characters are becoming slightly more complex, and that will continue more and more as we get deeper in the series.”

Rowling received word that the United States court system had
dismissed Nancy Stouffer’s claim that Rowling’s works were inspired by her
Legend of Rah and the Muggles
.

It was announced that Rowling and her husband, Dr. Neil Murray, were expecting their first child together in the spring.

Educational publishers Kumon published the results of a survey in which
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
was deemed the best children’s story of all time.

Warner Brothers announced that
Chamber of Secrets
would have its world premiere in London on November 3.

Sad news: It was announced that actor Richard Harris, who had enchanted audiences with his portrayal of Professor Dumbledore, was battling cancer, although he was expected to reprise his role for the third time in
Prisoner of Azkaban
. By the end of the month, however, Harris had passed away.

In an interview with Sci Fi Wire, Chris Columbus revealed that J.K. Rowling’s involvement with the films had been minimal, due to the fact that she basically trusted those involved. “Jo was involved with the script again,” he said. “As always, she has a lot of information that none of us have, in terms of where the characters are going and in terms of what’s going to happen to them. She’s also got the backgrounds of all these characters in this world in hundreds of notebooks. So we can basically call her or email her
and find out any little piece of information we need. That relationship still exists. I think she trusts us a lot, so her involvement this time was actually a little less than on the first film.”

Chris Columbus mused that the young cast of the Harry Potter films — Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint — would leave their roles following the third film. Obviously he was wrong.

Web site www.harrypotter.co.uk announced that it would be broadcasting over the Internet the London premiere of
Chamber of Secrets
straight from the red carpet.

Speaking to the
Detroit Free Press
, director Chris Columbus expressed his feelings about moving immediately from the release of
Sorcerer’s Stone
to
Chamber of Secrets
. “It was the weirdest feeling,” he admitted. “Because on one hand I was exhausted, and on the other I felt completely relaxed. I felt that with the first movie we had earned the fans’ trust, we had earned J.K. Rowling’s trust, we had earned Warner Brothers’ trust and the pressure was off. Now all we had to be concerned with was making the best movie we could from the second book. It was like the pressure of the first date was over and now we could get on with the relationship.” In the same interview he described some of the differences, from his point of view, between the two films. “With
Chamber of Secrets
I had nine months to get the effects right. The kids were stronger in their roles, feeling more like they owned them instead
of just borrowing them. The whole cast was like a family. I had decided to use a lot of handheld camera on this one, which gave us all a huge sense of freedom. But the biggest benefit was that we were able to head right into the story, without explaining everything. It was more like, ‘Hold on, here we go!’”

By
Chamber of Secrets,
Daniel Radcliffe had become an undeniable star. (David Bebber/Reuters/Corbis)

On that same subject, producer David Heyman added, “It was challenging. Fortunately we benefited from the experience of the first film and having many of our original production crew continue on through the second film, so we had a wealth of knowledge to draw upon.”

In an interview, Columbus revealed one of the benefits of going right into production while
Sorcerer’s Stone
was just hitting theaters: “None of us had the chance to sit back and think about the success of the first film, which I think was good for everyone, particularly the kids. By that point, the cast and crew had become like
one big family. It was great that we could all share that sense of excitement, without losing our momentum, and carry it into
Chamber of Secrets
.”

In an interview with CBS
The Early Show
, Daniel Radcliffe addressed the experience of shooting
Chamber of Secrets
: “I’m getting more and more into my part, and it’s getting kind of harder to differentiate between me [and Harry], ’cause as time goes on, I’m finding more things that connect us both. When reading the fourth book, you find out even more things we share. It’s really weird.”

Verso Books, the publisher of
The Irresistible Rise of Harry Potter
by Andrew Blake, was forced to pull the book from bookstores due to the fact that J.K. Rowling’s lawyers felt its dust jacket design gave the impression that it was an officially sanctioned book.

While speaking to the BBC, Daniel Radcliffe noted, “I love English at school — that’s what I really love. I love reading and just writing and everything, so I think I might like to be a writer [instead of an actor]. Or, because I was given, like, a love of film by Chris Columbus, I think I might like to be a director.”

The
Toledo Blade
reported that the success of the Harry Potter films had actually had an impact on British tourism. “With a second Harry Potter movie just opening in the United States, the British tourism industry hopes to capitalize on the great popularity of J.K. Rowling’s creation by marketing the United Kingdom as a land of owls and ghosts, giants and enchanted forests. Promoting Harry Potter’s ‘magical Britain’ became part of a campaign to encourage more international visitors after foot-and-mouth disease and 9/11 caused visits to the United Kingdom to drop by nine percent in 2001. When the first movie came out in November of last year, the British Tourism Authority published a ‘movie map’ highlighting sites from the films and books, while tour organizers scrambled to
put together itineraries with Harry Potter themes. The reaction was immediate and tremendous. The Tourist Authority began receiving nine times as many visitors to their Web site and more than 200 calls a day on their ‘Hedwig Hotline’.”