Yesterday the Twitterverse went crazy over some new Harry Potter and the Cursed Child news. We waited until there was more concrete information to post, which we have gotten this morning! The website has been updated to let us know that it is a SEQUEL, so now we know why Rowling was adamant it wasn’t a prequel.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child officially opens at the Palace Theatre London in July 2016, with preview performances from late May 2016. Tickets will go on sale October 30th, for more information on ticket prices and preview tickets, click here. It is one play presented in two Parts, which are intended to be seen in order on the same day (matinee and evening) or on two consecutive evenings.
Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a new play by Jack Thorne. It is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage.
It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.
While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.
ABC Family is bringing you an exciting weekend of movies with Harry Potter FUNDAY, starting TONIGHT and lasting ALL weekend long! From Friday, October 16 – Sunday, October 18 you can watch all the Potter films (except Goblet of Fire) and create your own magic on social media! Fans can visit fundayapp.com to Potterfy their social media profiles with art inspired by their favorite witches and wizards. The app also allows viewers to create memes of their all-time favorite Harry Potter moments.
The schedule is as follows:
Friday, October 16th, 2015:
3:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m., ET/PT – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (repeats on Saturday, October 17th at 7:00 a.m. ET/PT)
7:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m., ET/PT – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (repeats on Saturday, October 17th at 10:30 a.m., ET/PT)
Saturday, October 17th, 2015:
2:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., ET/PT – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (repeats on Sunday, October 18th at 7:00 a.m., ET/PT)
5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., ET/PT – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (repeats on Sunday, October 18th at 10:15 a.m., ET/PT)
8:30 p.m. – 12:00 a.m., ET/PT – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (repeats on Sunday, October 18th at 1:30pm ET/PT)
Sunday, October 18th, 2015:
5:15 p.m. – 9:00 p.m., ET/PT – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
9:00 p.m. – 12:00 a.m., ET/PT – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
As they do every Winter, Warner Bros. Studio Tour has announced their special feature for Hogwarts in the snow. Harry Potter fans are invited to discover how special effects experts make snow that never melts, how set dressers transform locations for Christmas scenes, and how flames are created without fire, as Warner Bros. Studio Tour London opens the doors on its most magical makeover yet. Hogwarts in the Snow will run from Friday 13th November – Sunday 31st January 2016. Tickets must be pre-booked and all extra activities are included in the ticket price.
This festive season, film fans are invited to discover how special effects experts make snow that never melts, how set dressers transform locations for Christmas scenes, and how flames are created without fire, as Warner Bros. Studio Tour London opens the doors on its most magical makeover yet.
Launching on Friday 13th November and running for a limited time only, Hogwarts in the Snow will offer visitors the opportunity to see the Harry Potter film series’ most iconic sets decorated for festive scenes. Eight Christmas trees will line the Great Hall, the Gryffindor common room will be dressed for the season and a blanket of filmmaking snow will be meticulously applied to the majestic Hogwarts castle model.
In the Hogwarts Great Hall, visitors will spot wreaths and garlands, trees decked with golden baubles and topped with witches on miniature broomsticks, as well as a replica feast. One side of the Great Hall will be dedicated to savoury props, featuring roast turkeys, hams studded with cherries and bowls of potatoes, while the other will be devoted to sweet treats including flaming Christmas puddings and iced cakes.
For the first time this year, the Goblet of Fire will emerge from its original jewelled casket, rigged by special effects experts, and will be ‘lit’ with flames that change from blue to red. Featured in the fourth film, the impressive goblet was used as a way to select champions for the Triwizard Tournament. During production, the picture-perfect hero version was sculpted from a single piece of wood by the Prop Making Department, while a special effects replica was moulded in fibreglass and painted to look identical to its wooden counterpart.
The Hogwarts castle model will be transformed for the occasion by a team led by Model Effects Supervisor José Granell, who worked on the Harry Potter film series. The snow is hand-sprinkled onto the incredibly-detailed model and is made from a combination of granulated paper and grains of salt – chosen because it clumps like real snowflakes and catches the light like ice. Visitors will be able to touch samples of the different types of ‘snow’ used during production, each selected for its ability to float like falling snow, crunch under foot or glisten in the light.
The scale model was first built for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with a team of 80 model makers working for almost seven months to create the original version. The crew updated it over the years when the story required it (the bridge was added for Prisoner of Azkaban, the Owlery for Goblet of Fire, and the Astronomy Tower for Half-Blood Prince), and the model was used for nearly every exterior shot of Hogwarts seen in the first six Harry Potter films. The specialist work was so detailed that it would have taken one person more than 74 years to complete!
Fireplaces throughout the attraction (including those in the Leaky Cauldron and Great Hall) will be ‘lit’ with special effects fire, created by filmmakers using a combination of water vapour and lighting effects. The Gryffindor common room and Weasley kitchen will also be dressed for the occasion with streamers, Christmas crackers and oranges.
Festive facts:
The food featured in the feasts throughout the early films was real; however, the Set Decoration Department later used artificial food created from powder and resin.
While the film series’ Christmas scenes feel very festive, many of them were actually filmed at unexpected times of year (even during summer) depending on the production schedule.
Christmas puddings were rigged with real flames for the Great Hall’s Christmas feast, with gas pipes hidden along the floor and running up into the tables. This special effect will be recreated at the Studio Tour this year, especially for the attraction’s festive feature.
Audible has released the first two chapters of Robert Galbraith’s Career of Evil through Twitter! Career of Evil is Galbraith’s third novel in the Cormoran Strike series. The book will be released one week from today, on October 20th. Listen to Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 on Soundcloud.
When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg. Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible – and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality.
With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them….
Career of Evil is the third in the highly acclaimed series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott. A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, it is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives.
To celebrate the publication of by J.K. Rowling, illustrated by Jim Kay, Bloomsbury Children’s Books is launching the Harry Potter Spotter competitionin association with children’s charity, Kids in Museums.
The Harry Potter Spotter competition launches on Friday 9th October. It challenges people of all ages to seek out and photograph an image from the book placed in museums around the country and share via social media. Working with Kids in Museums, Bloomsbury has placed 12 Jim Kay prints in 12 different museums around the UK and Ireland. With a clue to solve at each venue participants must find these images, take a photo of themselves with it and share via Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #HarryPotterSpotter.
Jim Kay has always been a fan of museums saying; ‘Museums are one of my favourite places to visit. The objects they contain tell the story of ourselves and our world, and I find them endlessly inspiring and fascinating. My illustrations owe so much to museum collections, it’s an honour to know they will appear in the places that made me want to become an artist.’
One overall winner will receive a family ticket to the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter plus a Harry Potter tote bag, a Jim Kay signed print and a copy of the Deluxe Illustrated Edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (RRP: £150). 12 additional prize winners, one from each museum, will receive a Harry Potter tote bag, aJim Kay signed print and a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Illustrated Edition (RRP: £30). Participants only need to spot one print to enter.
In honor of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: The Illustrated Edition being released today, Bloomsbury and Scholastic gave fan sites the chance to ask illustrator Jim Kay some questions about his work on the book. All of his answers may be read below along with some of the illustrations from the new edition, available today. Thanks to Jim for taking the time to answer all our questions!
If you can’t make it out to a store today, order your copy on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk!
Were you influenced by previous Harry Potter illustrators/the films or did you veer away from both? (Alwaysjkrowling.com)
I’m a huge fan of both the books and the films. I thought the screen adaptations were a wonderful showcase of the best set design, product design, costume, casting, directing and acting their disciplines had to offer. I knew from the start that I’m competing to some degree with the hundreds of people involved in the visuals of the film. I remember watching the extras that come with the movie DVDs a few years back, and wondering how on earth you’d get to be lucky enough to work on the visuals for such a great project. To be offered the opportunity to design the whole world again from scratch was fantastic, but very daunting. I’d like to think that over the years lots of illustrators will have a crack at Potter, in the same way that Alice in Wonderland has seen generations of artists offer their own take on Lewis Carroll’s novel. I had to make it my version though, and so from the start I needed to set it apart from the films. I’ll be honest I’ve only seen a few illustrations from other Potter books, so that’s not been so much of a problem. I love Jonny Duddle’s covers, and everyone should see Andrew Davidson’s engravings – they are incredible!
What was the most important detail for you to get right with your illustrations? (Magical Menagerie)
To try and stay faithful to the book. It’s very easy when you are scribbling away to start wandering off in different directions, so you must remind yourself to keep reading Jo’s text. Technically speaking though, I think composition is important – the way the movement and characters arrange themselves on the page – this dictates the feel of the book.
What medium do you use to create your illustrations? (Snitchseeker)
I use anything that makes a mark – I am not fussy. So I don’t rely on expensive watercolour or paints, although I do occasionally use them – I like to mix them up with cheap house paint, or wax crayons. Sometimes in a local DIY store I’ll see those small tester pots of wall paint going cheap in a clear-out sale, and I’ll buy stacks of them, and experiment with painting in layers and sanding the paint back to get nice textures. The line is almost always pencil, 4B or darker, but the colour can be a mixture of any old paint, watercolour, acrylic, and oil. Diagon Alley was unusual in that I digitally coloured the whole illustration in order to preserve the pencil line drawing. I’d recommend experimenting; there is no right or wrong way to make an illustration, just do what works for you!
Because each book is so rich in detail, what is your personal process when choosing specific images? (The Daily Snitcher)
I read the book, then read it again and again, making notes. You start off with lots of little ideas, and draw a tiny thumbnail illustration, about the size of a postage stamp, to remind you of the idea for an illustration you had while reading the book. I then start to draw them a little bigger, about postcard size, and show them to Bloomsbury. We then think about how many illustrations will appear in each chapter, and try to get the balance of the book right by moving pictures around, dropping or adding these rough drawings as we go. With Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Bloomsbury were great in that they let me try all sorts of things out, different styles, concepts. Some I didn’t think would get into the final book, but everyone was very open to new ideas. There was no definite plan with regards to how the book would look; we just experimented and let it evolve.
Given the distinct split of younger vs. more mature readers of the series, how do you construct your illustrations so that they can appeal to both audiences at once? (Mugglenet)
The simple answer is I don’t try. I think only about the author and myself. You can’t please everyone, particularly when you know how many people have read the book. I don’t think good books are made by trying to appeal to a wide audience. You just try to do the best work you can in the time given, and respect the author’s work. Most illustrators are never happy with their own work. You always feel you want to try more combinations or alternative compositions. You are forever in search of that golden illustration that just ‘works’, but of course it’s impossible to achieve – there will always be another way of representing the text. Effectively you chase rainbows until you run out of time! You get a gut feeling if an image is working. I remember what I liked as a child (Richard Scarry books!). Detail and humour grabbed me as a nipper, and it’s the same now I’m in my forties.
Did you base any characters or items in the book on real people or things? (Leaky Cauldron)
Lots of the book is based on real places, people and experiences. It helps to make the book personal to me, and therefore important. The main characters of the books are based on real people, partly for practical reasons, because I need to see how the pupils age over seven years. In Diagon Alley in particular, some of the shop names are personal to me. As a child we had a toad in the garden called Bufo (from the latin Bufo bufo), Noltie’s Botanical Novelties is named after a very clever friend of mine who works at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. The shop called ‘Tut’s Nuts’ is a little joke from my days working at Kew Gardens; they had in their collections some seeds from the tomb of Tutankhamun, which were affectionately known as ‘Tut’s Nuts’. The imprisoned boy reaching for an apple in Brigg’s Brooms is from a drawing my friend did when we were about 9 years old – that’s thirty two years ago!
Which character was the most difficult to draw? (Harry Potter’s Page)
Harry, without a doubt. Children are difficult to draw because you can’t use too many lines around the eyes and face, otherwise they look old. One misplaced pencil line can age a child by years, so you have to get it just right. Also Harry’s glasses are supposed to look repaired and bent out of shape, which I’ve found tricky to get right.
What is your favourite scene you have illustrated? (Alwaysjkrowling.com)
That’s a difficult one. I’m fond of the ghosts. I paint them in reverse (almost like a photographic negative) and layer several paintings to make them translucent. I enjoyed Nearly Headless Nick. I really enjoyed illustrating the trolls too. Your favourite illustrations tend to be the ones that gave you the least amount of difficulties and I think Diagon Alley was nice for this reason. It was more like a brainstorming exercise, slowly working from left to right. My favourite character to illustrate is Hagrid – I love big things!
Are there any hidden messages/items in your drawings for the Harry Potter series? (Magical Menagerie)
There are, but they are little things that relate to my life, so I’m not sure how much sense they’d make to other people. I like to include my dog in illustrations if I can (he’s in Diagon Alley). I also put a hare in my work, for good luck. There’s a hare in A Monster Calls, and in Harry Potter. My friends appear as models for the characters in book one, and some of their names too can be seen carved on a door, and on Diagon Alley. There are little references to later books too, such as on the wrought-iron sign of the Leaky Cauldron. I do it to keep things interesting for me while I’m drawing.
How did you approach illustrating the Hogwarts Castle and grounds? (Harry Potter Fan Zone)
I really enjoyed doing this. You have to go through all seven books looking for mentions of the individual rooms, turrets, doors and walls of the castle, and make lots of notes. Then you check for mentions of its position, for example if you can see the sun set from a certain window, to find out which way the castle is facing. I then built a small model out of scrap card and Plasticine and tried lighting it from different directions. It was important to see how it would look in full light, or as a silhouette. Then it was a long process of designing the Great Hall, and individual towers. I have a huge number of drawings just experimenting with different doorways, roofs. Some early compositions were quite radical, then I hit upon the idea of trees growing under, through and over the whole castle, as if the castle had grown out of the landscape. This also gives me the opportunity to show trees growing through the inside of some rooms in future illustrations.
What illustrations in the book are you most proud of? (Leaky Cauldron)
Usually it’s the ones that took the least amount of effort! It takes me so many attempts to get an illustration to work, that if one works on the second or third attempt, it’s a big relief. There is one illustration in the book that worked first time (a chapter opener of Hogwarts architecture, with birds nesting on the chimney pots). It kind of felt wrong that the illustration was done without agonising over it for days, it didn’t feel real somehow, so I’m proud of that one because it’s so rare that I get an image to work first time! The only other illustration that was relatively straightforward was the Sorting Hat. Illustrations that come a little easier tend to have a freshness about them, and I think those two feel a little bit looser than others in the book.
Which book do you think will be the most challenging one to illustrate? (Harry Potter’s Page)
At the minute it’s book two! I think book one I was full of adrenaline, driven by sheer terror! Book two I want to have a different feel, and that makes it challenging to start again and rethink the process.
Is there a particular scene in the future Harry Potter books you’re excited to illustrate? (Harry Potter Fan Zone)
I’m really looking forward to painting Aragog in book two. I’m really fond of spiders – there are lots in my studio – so it’s great having reference close to hand! I’m hoping that by the Deathly Hallows we will be fully into a darker and more adult style of illustration, to reflect the perils facing Potter!
How many illustrations did you initially do for the book, and how many of those appeared in the final edition? (Snitchseeker)
There are stacks of concept drawings that no one will ever see, such as the Hogwarts sketches, which I needed to do in order to get my head around the book. Then there are rough drawings, then rough drawings that are worked up a little more, and then it might take five or six attempts for each illustration to get it right.
What house do you think you may have been placed in, aged 11, and would it be the same now? (Mugglenet)
I’d like to think it was Ravenclaw as a child. I was much more confident back then, and creative, plus they have an interesting house ghost in the form of the Grey Lady. These days I work hard and am loyal, so probably Hufflepuff.
Illustrating aside, what is one thing that you love doing to express your creativity? (The Daily Snitcher)
It’s difficult to say because for the past 5 years I have worked on illustration seven days a week, every hour of the day. A few years back I started to write, and I really enjoyed that, it’s far more intimate than illustrating, and I love going over the same line and trying to hone it down to the core of what you are trying to express. My partner makes hats, and I’m very envious. It looks like wonderful fun. We have lots of designs for hats in sketchbooks. I really want to get some time to make some. I’ve always been slightly torn that I didn’t go into fashion, but my sewing is terrible. I used to play guitar a lot and write little bits of music, but that’s difficult now because my hand gets very stiff from drawing all day! The funny thing is, if I did ever get a day off, I’d just want to draw!
