In spring 2004, when Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released in cinemas, I was one of those people who went to the earliest preview showing possible.
My friends and I got up at 7am or something in order to get near the front of the queue. And believe me, this was no mean feat. We were in our first year at university and 7am wasn’t a time we were usually aware of. After the film had finished, we had some lunch and went back to watch it again. At some point I remember remarking to one of my friends that we’d probably be pushing 30 by the time the final film was released. I wondered whether we’d still care.
So I’m pleased to report that, several years on, the release of a new teaser trailer for Part I of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and the impending opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter are still causing too much excitement to handle.
As all fans know, the final book of the series is being made into two films, both to celebrate the series and also so that nothing important is left out – a move welcomed by those who feel that so many important scenes and subplots have been missed out of the films to date due to the need to keep them from being too long.
Part I is set to be released on November 19th, with Part II hitting screens on July 15th 2011. On Sunday, the first official teaser for Part I was shown at the MTV Movie Awards, where the Twilight saga cleaned up but Tom Felton picked up the ‘Best Villain’ award for his performance as Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
It’s a classic Potter trailer – dark and atmospheric music, dramatic panoramas of woodland and coastline, a brief romantic interlude and a whole lot of anguished facial expressions and shouting. We get a peek at how the tensions between Harry and Ron are going to play out and there’s lots of talk of death. In short, it might not have dazzling vampires but you know it’s going to be exciting. Take a look here:
If that’s not enough, it’s now just two weeks until the opening of the world’s first Potter theme park at Universal Orlando Resort. A 30-minute special on the creation of Harry’s world - viewable by you lucky US readers here - aired on Sunday, giving us an insight into the attractions.
From June 18th, it will be possible to explore Hogwarts, visit the village of Hogsmeade and even shop and eat at some of the same places featured in the series. The rollercoaster quotient will be satisfied by ‘Dragon Challenge’ and the somewhat gentler ‘Flight of the Hippogriff’ ride.
Now this is all very well and I can’t wait to see what the park looks like once it’s finally opened, but with it being in Florida it’s highly unlikely I’m ever going to get to go there. It’s not very often that I can sympathise with Boris Johnson, but this week the mayor of London has used his column in the Daily Telegraph as an opportunity to urge Potter fans to lobby for a similar attraction in the UK.
Naturally, BoJo is keen to see a UK-based theme park because of the books’ roots in British culture and has admitted to a certain amount of ‘jealous irritation’ that a tourist attraction based on a ‘great British invention’ is on the other side of the Atlantic.
“I know that Thierry and everyone at Warner Bros and Universal will do a magnificent job of making it look and feel authentic and faithful to the stories,” he writes, “But I know somewhere that's even better than Orlando at looking like London – and that is London. I want to know why this Kingdom of Potter is not being built in the UK, and I won't be fobbed off with any nonsense about the weather.”
I’m honestly very happy for you if The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is closer to home for you than it is for me - but I’m not going to lie, I’m hugely jealous too. Having seen photos from people who have already had a look round, it looks like it’s going to be fantastic, with amazing attention to detail. Sadly, unless the Potter theme park ends up expanding into some sort of multi-location setup à la Disney, it’s time to start saving up for those flights!
Image via of.skylines’s Flickr