Earlier this week, Pottermore announced that Christmas is coming early to the site with #PottermoreChristmas. Starting on December 12th, and for each day leading up to December 23rd, there will be new content made available on the site. These new tidbits will be released at 1pm GMT (8am EST). Many news outlets are reporting, incorrectly, that there will be 12 new stories. The site originally posted:
With wonderful writing by J.K. Rowling in Moments from Half-Blood Prince, shiny gold Galleons and even a new potion or two, make sure you don’t miss out – just visit pottermore.com and answer our rhyming riddles to unwrap a #PottermoreChristmas surprise every day.
But after the major news outlets (meaning not Potter fan sites) started getting the story wrong they decided to clarify by saying:
As true Potter fans worked out straight away, our 12 days of festive surprises and accompanying rhyming riddles refer to new potions and Moments in addition to several new entries by J.K. Rowling that will be posted on pottermore.com between 12th and 23rd December. Sorry to disappoint fans, but there will not be a set of 12 new short stories, one for each day of Christmas. Even Pottermore wouldn’t be that generous.
You may remember, back in October, we reported that Katie Leung’s two-part special One Child would be premiering this month. Well, today is the day! At 9pm ET/PT, tune into SundanceTV for Part 1 of the two-night special.
SundanceTV’s latest original scripted drama “One Child” will have its world premiere as a two-night special event on Friday, December 5th and Saturday, December 6th at 9pm ET/PT, each night featuring a two-hour episode. The mini-series stars Katie Leung (Harry Potter), Emmy® nominated actress Elizabeth Perkins (“Weeds”) and Donald Sumpter (“Game of Thrones,” The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and is penned by Guy Hibbert, known for his work on Five Minutes of Heaven and currently working on Eye in the Sky, starring Aaron Paul and Helen Mirren. This riveting dramatic thriller plunges into the heart of contemporary China – in all its contradictions – and takes a fresh, cross-cultural look at what it means to be family.
“One Child,” following the summer’s critical success for SundanceTV’s “The Honorable Woman” starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, tells the story of a young Chinese-born woman, Mei (Leung), adopted at birth by a couple in the UK, who suddenly gets called back to her native Guangzhou by her birth mother. Her son Ajun – and the brother Mei never knew existed – has been wrongly accused of murder and is facing execution. The real killer is a rich Chinese ‘princeling’ with a well-connected, wealthy father who has corrupted the witnesses into lying.
Little, Brown Book Group will be publishing a new book from J.K. Rowling in April 2015. The book is an illustrated edition of a speech she gave at Harvard University’s graduation ceremony back in 2008. Very Good Lives will be published in hardback e-book format on 14th April 2015 and will cost £9.99. Proceeds from the book will go to Rowling’s charity – Lumos.
Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination uses the speech Rowling made to graduating students at Harvard in 2008.
It will be illustrated by Joel Holland, with 90% of the proceeds from the sales of the book going to Lumos, Rowling’s charity which helps disadvantaged children. The remaining 10% will be donated to university-wide financial aid at Harvard University.
Little, Brown Book Group and Little, Brown & Company in the US are also making a donation to Lumos.
Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust said: “I have heard and read many commencement speeches, none more moving and memorable than J K Rowling’s. Years after her visit to Harvard, people still talk about it—and still find inspiration in her singular evocation of the idea that living a meaningful life so often means daring to risk failure. What a powerful example she embodies, and what a remarkable gift her speech was, and is, for all of us privileged to hear it then—and to read it now.”
A couple weeks ago we reported that Rupert Grint’s Broadway show, It’s Only a Play, would be extending it’s run through March 29th. Unfortunately, it was revealed today that Rupert (as well as Megan Mullally and Nathan LAne) will not be returning after the original end date of January 4th. Rupert’s replacement has not yet been announced, but Martin Short will be taking over for Nathan Lane.
In It’s Only A Play, it’s opening night of Peter Austin’s (Matthew Broderick) new play as he anxiously awaits to see if his show is a hit. With his career on the line, he shares his big First Night with his best friend, a television star (Nathan Lane), his fledgling producer (Megan Mullally), his erratic leading lady (Stockard Channing), his wunderkind director (Rupert Grint), an infamous drama critic (F. Murray Abraham), and a fresh-off-the-bus coat check attendant (Micah Stock) on his first night in Manhattan. It’s alternately raucous, ridiculous and tender — and proves that sometimes the biggest laughs happen offstage.
In a new interview with Digital Spy, producer David Heyman discusses Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as well as their decision to split Deathly Hallows into two films. Watch below,and thanks to SnitchSeeker we also have a transcript. David is very soft-spoken so you’ll have to turn up your volume.
I know you’ve said before it’s helped you in your career to have lived in America and here. So how does it feel to be going back to the world of Potter that’s going to be set in New York for Fantastic Beasts?
David Heyman: Anything that Jo creates is exciting to be a part of. She has such an incredible imagination. It’s a privilege to have worked with her on the eight Potter films and to be working with her again on this. She’s written a wonderful script. I’m very, very excited.
Are you looking to start casting soon for Newt?
Heyman: I think we’ll probably start up sometime next year.
How do you feel to have started this new trend – I think it was you – with Potter splitting the final chapter into two? It’s now kind of the norm.
Heyman: That was so not a calculated decision. It was really borne purely out of creative imperative. I think if we’d done one film, it’d have been four-five hours long. As much as people’s attention is much … people love Potter – I think they would have struggled, and we’d have had to cut out too much to make it work.
So, I know people will find that hard to believe but I promise you it was borne out of creative imperative. Actually it wasn’t me who had the idea. Someone else had the idea: Lionel Wigram, who is producing Fantastic Beasts with me. And my initial reaction was no. He said, “No, David. How are we going to do it?” And I reread the books, and Steve Kloves, the screenwriter, we discussed it. It became clear it was the only way to tell the story that we wanted to tell in the way that we wanted to tell it. I don’t know whether all the others are borne out of a similar creative imperative. Maybe. But that was the source of ours.
