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Harry Potter: latest news & rumours
Eddie Redmayne to play Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts? ... The latest news, rumours and stories about Harry Potter and JK Rowling
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Is Eddie Redmayne playing Newt Scamander in Harry Potter prequel?
Rmours surrounding JK Rowling’s latest addition to the Harry Potter franchise continue to flurry and now it seems that Eddie Redmayne is to play the lead role in Fantastic Beasts.
Harry Potter fans' $1 million plan to buy 'Hogwarts' castle
A crowdfunding exercise by Harry Potter fans to buy their own real-life 'Hogwarts' castle has raised 25 per cent of its target in the first 15 minutes.
The College of Wizardry's Harry Potter-themed events at Czocha Castle in Poland attracted global interest following an article by the Telegraph, and now its organisers are looking to expand their scholarly pursuits by buying a castle of their own.
9 times JK Rowling has inspired Harry Potter fans
A new letter from JK Rowling to one of her fans emerged online, in which the author wrote:
"What you say about Harry helping you at what was clearly a dreadful time in your life means more to me than I can easily express. I freely confess that I loathe bullying and the way it is still so often 'handled' in schools. Your experience is shocking and disturbing and that you have turned out to be a compassionate, moral, highly motivated person is high testimony to your courage. Gryffindor for you, my lad…"
Daniel Radcliffe 'not marketable without English accent'
Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has been told he is not marketable in movies without his English accent.
The west London-born actor, who rose to fame as the boy wizard, was forced to abandon plans to speak with a Canadian twang in a film just two days before shooting began.
Radcliffe, 25, had been rehearsing with the accent for the romantic comedy What If when the producers decided at the last minute that his native brogue would be better.
“It was basically, ‘You’re not marketable without your English accent,’ which is bad news for all the other stuff I’ve done with American accents,” Radcliffe said.
Belles ring for Emma Watson in Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast
Emma Watson is to return to the world of enchanted washing-up, but this time the mops sing as well as clean.
The website The Wrap reports that the UN goodwill ambassador and former Harry Potter actress has been cast in Disney's live-action adaptation of its Oscar-nominated 1991 musical animation.
Watson had previously been due to star in a Beauty and the Beast directed by Guillermo Del Toro for Warner Bros.
Harry Potter fans win four-year fight for Fair Trade chocolate frogs
Harry Potter fans exercised by Warner Bros's use of non-Fair Trade chocolate in their Potter-branded sweets have won a four-year battle to have them made in keeping with the boy wizard's principles.
Activist fans sent Warner Bros videos in the style of the books' "howlers" – messages with loud scoldings – and even threatened to put the evil Lord Voldemort's "Dark Mark" over their offices during the campaign to stop uncertified cocoa being used in products sold at Harry Potter theme parks and other outlets.
Is this how Draco Malfoy should have looked?
Every time new drawings are released for Harry Potter books, fans are made to think again about JK Rowling's wizarding world. Now drawings from Jim Kay for the new fully illustrated version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone conjure up a far darker and filmic version of Hogwarts and its students and teachers.
Kay won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2012 for his inky, gothic illustration of Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls, and these drawings of Harry's friends Rubeus Hagrid, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley and enemy Draco Malfoy are similarly gloomy.
Emma Watson to star in a jazz musical
Damien Chazelle, the writer and director of Best Picture Oscar-nominee Whiplash is returning to similar territory with a musical comedy - only this time he's adding Emma Watson in to play the girlfriend of the drummer character played by Miles Teller.
Couple fly 5,000 miles for Harry Potter proposal
Surbiton train station isn't traditionally associated with romance, but for one Harry Potter-obsessed couple, it was the site of their new beginning just as it was for Harry in the Half-Blood Prince film.
Samuel Goetsch, from Texas, asked girlfriend Stephanie to marry him on the platform despite travel cancellations getting in their way.
Harry Potter actor David Ryall dies aged 79
David Ryall (Picture: Rex)
David Ryall, who played Elphias Doge in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, has died aged 79.
Ryall's other film roles included parts in 1980's The Elephant Man, and a critically acclaimed turn as the Rev St John Froud in the 1990 Tom Sharpe adaptation Wilt. The actor also appeared in a number of television series, including Dennis Potter’s musical drama The Singing Detective, and the BBC comedy Outnumbered.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Ryall's character Doge is a close friend and biographer of Albus Dumbledore, who speaks to Harry at Bill and Fleur's wedding.
Pottermore's version of The Half-Blood Prince
What did we make of it? While the Draco revelations were certainly interesting, there wasn't a whole lot delivered by the website, really. But take a look for yourself: we had all the updates, day-by-day here: Pottermore: latest updates
JK Rowling: Malfoy fantasies are 'unhealthy'
Bad news: turns out, it's not okay to fancy Draco Malfoy.
In the longest new piece of writing by JK Rowling to appear on the Potter publishing website, Pottermore, in months, the author admits she finds the fact that female fans adore Malfoy troubling, writing: "I have often had cause to remark on how unnerved I have been by the number of girls who fell for this particular fictional character."
Rowling goes on to explain that although "girls are very apt to romanticise" the "dark glamour of the anti-hero", she has had to tell fans, "rather severely, that Draco was not concealing a heart of gold under all that sneering and prejudice and that no, he and Harry were not destined to end up best friends."
Catch up with the Christmas Pottermore updates here.
Inferi 'were vagrant homeless'
The Inferi, as depicted on Pottermore
In a chilling twist, JK Rowling has revealed that the animated corpses, otherwise known as Inferi, featured in The Half-Blood Prince were "vagrant, homeless muggles", who were killed by Voldemort when the dark wizard and villain of the book was rising to power.
The revelation was made in a new piece of writing, published by Rowling in an interactive chapter of the book on Pottermore, the web publishing site dedicated to Harry Potter.
Catch up with the Christmas Pottermore updates here.
Snape definitely isn't a vampire
JK Rowling has addressed the persistent rumours that Professor Snape might be a vampire, in an attempt to put the popular fan theory to rest (and not in a coffin).
"While it is true that [Snape] has an unhealthy pallor, and is sometimes described as looking like a large bat in his long black cloak, he never actually turns into a bat, we meet him outside the castle by daylight, and no corpses with puncture marks in their necks ever turn up at Hogwarts," Rowling wrote in a new update on the Harry Potter web publishing site Pottermore.
Catch up with the Christmas Pottermore updates here.
JK Rowling confirms Jewish character at Hogwarts
Happy Hanukkah! In a Q&A on Twitter, JK Rowling confirmed that there are indeed Jewish wizards in the Potter universe – and indeed, wizards from every belief system in the world, including Jedis ("I wouldn't put it past Dean Thomas"). Just not Wiccans.
Chinese university builds 'Hogwarts' department
Although the architects behind the animation school of Heibei's Academy of Fine Arts claim they weren't inspired by Hogwarts, the building fits the part thanks to its clock tower, turrets and castle walls.
Called the 'Cinderella Castle', the building, located in the north province of China, cost nearly £250 million to build and is influenced by European castle architecture.
Why Snape was Harry Potter's least favourite teacher
A new Pottermore update takes users back to Hogwarts and deep into the castle's cellars as Rowling sheds light on the history of cauldrons and, more intriguingly, why Professor Severus Snape is such a dark character in the novels.
In an entry called Potions, Rowling explains that chemistry was her least favourite subject at school: "Naturally, when I was trying to decide which subject Harry's arch-enemy, Severus Snape, should teach, it had to be the wizarding equivalent."
She adds that Snape "conforms perfectly to the stereotype" of potions masters, despite the professor's ambitions to be Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher: "the popular idea of a potions expert in the wizarding community is of a brooding, slow-burning personality."
JK Rowling reveals the only character she felt guilty for killing off
Pottermore continues to surprise and amaze us with news from the author herself. Today, in a beautiful interactive of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes joke shop, Rowling tells the story of Florean Fortescue, the only character she feels guilty for killing.
The author writes: "I seemed to have him kidnapped and killed for no good reason. He is not the first wizard whom Voldemort murdered because he knew too much (or too little), but he is the only one I feel guilty about, because it was all my fault."
Severus Snape and Lily Potter grew up in the same town
In a piece of new writing for Pottermore, JK Rowling reveals that Cokeworth, the small mining town Vernon Dursley takes the family right at the beginning of the first book, is also where Spinners End, Severus Snape's childhood home, is located. The town was where Petunia, Harry's aunt, and Lily, his mother, grew up.
It's Pottermore day!
Shake your baubles, Christmas has begun over on Pottermore. Or at least it will have from 1pm. We're liveblogging the latest updates from JK Rowling, with the hope that a new Draco Malfoy story is in our midst.
Watch: inside the real Hogwarts
Remember that awesome College of Wizardry in Poland? Well now we have video of the time 200 people from 11 countries took part in the event, which ran for four days, with experienced LARPers playing the roles of the teaching staff. It culminated in a glamorous dance to rival the Yule Ball featured in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Are these the coolest Harry Potter books ever?
A student from Hungary is in "the middle of a storm" after Harry Potter book designs she made for her university coursework went viral.
Kincső Nagy, 26, an MA graphic design student at the University of West Hungary's Institute of Applied Arts in Sopron, used laser cutting, stencilling, pop-up and glow in the dark paint to create cover illustrations for each book in the series, as well as a fully-illustrated edition of the first JK Rowling story, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
She originally posted her course designs on the showcase website Behance in September, but was amazed by the reaction after they were posted on Reddit.
Potter fans can finally study at Hogwarts
Aspiring wizards have at last got the chance to brew up potions, play Quidditch, and live, eat and sleep in a castle just like Hogwarts, thanks to The College of Wizardry.
In November, a four-day live-action roleplay event in Czocha Castle, Poland, saw 190 people from 11 different countries come together to create a Harry Potter school, and term will recommence in April next year.
"We got swamped by sign-ups and in two days the event was sold out. None of us had seen that coming," says Claus Raasted of Rollespilsfabrikken, one of the organisations behind the Potter school. "And here we are now with quite a bit of global interest for something that is in essence just a small, fan-made event."
You need to be over 18 to go to wizarding school, which costs £220 excluding travel. You can read the full story here, including which houses you can look forward to joining (and what robes you'll get).
The Fantastic Beasts script is complete!
JK Rowling has been working hard and now her first ever film script, for Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, is complete. Harry Potter producer David Heyman told us on the red carpet for his latest film, Paddington, that Rowling is done and the script is "wonderful".
In another interview with The Telegraph, Heyman added: "Jo’s a good scriptwriter, too,’ Heyman says. ‘She is so smart, and her turn of phrase, the precision of the language she uses, is a joy to behold."
Heyman told us that was all he could say, but here's the story in full for a few more details on filming and direction.
Snow falls on Hogwarts
Warner Bros has released a timelapse video, which depicts a team of workers covering a scale model of Hogwarts in snow.
While Durham Cathedral and Alnwick Castle in Northumberland in the main stood in for Hogwarts in Warner Bros' series of Harry Potter films, the model shown in the video was used for additional exterior shots of the courtyard tower and turrets.
The miniature Hogwarts can be seen at the The Harry Potter studios tour, which is currently being billed as Hogwarts in the Snow. Visitors tempted to touch the snow might be surprised: it looks authentic, but is actually made from salt.
New Harry Potter film under way
Don't get too excited - it's not coming from Warner Bros. In fact, its creators want it to exist to give an antidote to the Harry Potter films, if it gets funded.
A group of students from Manchester are looking to raise £40,000 by the end of November to produce a film based on the Harry Potter book series by JK Rowling, the BBC reports.
Cameron Cairnduff, the Potter fan behind the project, said: "We want to make something people will want to watch and we want to create our own opportunities. There are no good Harry Potter fan films - they're all American and have low production values."
How he will top production values on a budget of £40,000 remains a mystery.
Practice your duelling on Pottermore
Just as we had gotten over the excitement of the new JK Rowling writing that appeared on Pottermore, the Potter publishing site has lured us back wih a new Duelling Club. Promising the possibility of "becoming as talented as Professor Flitwick in casting spells and duelling", the Duelling Club can be joined by any Pottermore members, but you do need to buy some spellbooks from Flouish and Blotts and practice against your housemates before you challenge a rival from another house to a duel. Just remember: Expelliarmus!
New Pottermore material, review: 'delightfully grisly'
Forget trick or treating - if you are a Harry Potter fan, you're already guaranteed several treats this Halloween in the form of new essays by JK Rowling.
The best-selling author has published new work on her website, Pottermore.
"The extract about Umbridge is the longest and most revelatory, after Rowling’s admission that her treacly villain was based on one of her own teachers (though she has declined to say which one). Rowling is very good at villains and Umbridge remains one of her most vividly unpleasant creations. We discover how the young Dolores grew into the barbaric Ministry official who divided her family and then banished them from her life. Thankfully, Umbridge gets her comeuppance and is sent to Azkaban.
The other passages are uneven: a disappointingly flat section on the Naming Seers wouldn’t look out of place on Wikipedia. The piece on Thestrals is too short. Yet the history of Azkaban is so delightfully grisly I wish it was 5,000 words long, rather than a few hundred."
Daniel Radcliffe is very good at rapping
With his new horror film, Horns, coming out this weekend, the Harry Potter actor is making a lot of press appearances – and with such style. He appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and showed off his rap skills with what Fallon deemed "one of the trickiest, fastest songs I know". We'll let the video do the talking:
Daniel Radcliffe's Reddit AMA gave away amazing behind-the-scenes facts
Harry Potter's star, Daniel Radcliffe, took to Reddit to do a session on their Ask Me Anything forum last night and gave away all sorts of fascinating facts from his time on set. For instance, who knew that Snape actor Alan Rickman was as scary but, ultimately kind, as Severus himself? Even better, from this anecdote Rickman is clearly quite the practical joker too - even Peeves the Poltergeist would be put to shame:
"There's a shot of all the kids sleeping in the Great Hall, and the camera starts very wide, and comes in so that it's an inch from my face, a very long developing set. Alan Rickman decided he would plant one of those fart machines in my sleeping bag, and they waited until the camera had come in for this huge DRAMATIC developing shot, and then unleashed this tremendous noise in the great hall.
I immediately thought: 'This is one of the other kids f---ing around, and we were going to get in trouble.'
But as it turns out, it was one of the members of Britain's acting royalty."
Radcliffe also spilled the beans on why he wasn't allowed to put his name in the Goblet of Fire, what he learned from director Chris Columbus and what he thought of late Dumbledore actor Richard Harris and more. Read the 12 things we learned from Daniel Radcliffe's AMA here, and check out the full AMA here.
We check out the Harry Potter hotel
Sadly, this Leaky Cauldron-esque accommodation isn't located in Diagon Alley. However, Potter fans heading to the Diagon Alley set at Warner Bros Studios can spend the night in a 'Wizard Chamber' in Victoria's Georgian House Hotel.
The intention is to give guests the experience of a night in Hogwarts, with four-poster beds, potion bottles, cauldrons and other magical props. Midnight calls from Professor McGonagall or hooting from owls is, sadly, not included.
Well it would be rude not to. Telegraph reporter Harry Wallop went and road-tested the rooms himself, and claims that "the atmosphere is certainly fun". Read his full report.
Katie Leung talks Cho Chang and Harry Potter
Katie Leung, the actress who plays Harry's love interest/Dumbledore's Army member Cho Chang, has said that although she's grateful for the role, she's glad she's escaped typecasting. Leung was named a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit on Monday night and told The Telegraph about how Harry Potter affected her career: "I’ve been lucky enough to do gritty roles that takes me away from the Harry Potter Cho Chang character that I was.
I was incredibly grateful for it, but there is that fear that you’re never going to get away from the stereotype of that casting. I couldn’t have done anything more different after Potter.
"I wouldn’t even call that training, when I was doing Potter, because it was nothing I’d ever experienced before. It wasn’t like I had acting in mind at a young age, I just fell into it. It took me a long time before I could really decide that acting was something that I wanted to do for a long time."
More illustrated books ahead
The bad news is that Potter publisher Bloomsbury's ebook sales are down. However, a spokesperson from the company has promised that there will be "a huge surge in public interest in Harry Potter" in 2015, and new books to meet that demand.
The Telegraph reports that over the following year Bloomsbury will launch new children’s editions of the series and has commissioning artist Jim Kay to produce yet another edition with illustrations on every page. More beautiful books? Sounds good to us.
Take a sneak peak at the Dark Arts centre
The countdown has started: it is only weeks until Britain’s streets are flooded by children dressed as students at Hogwarts, the school for wizardry and home to Harry Potter – the boy who lived.
While studying at Hogwarts remains off limits to Muggles, the world of Harry Potter is easier to visit, and from October 14, the villains open their doors in a new Dark Arts exhibit at the Warner Bros Studio Tour.
PLUS: Harry Potter book night!
If that wasn't exciting enough, Bloomsbury have officially announced a Harry Potter book night on February 25, 2015.
The publisher promises that the event will give " new and existing fans a chance to share the wonder of J.K. Rowling’s unforgettable stories and, most excitingly, to introduce the next generation of readers to the unparalleled magic of Harry Potter. You are hereby invited to embrace the magic and banish the midwinter blues!"
Schools, bookshops, libraries and community groups will be invited by Bloomsbury to host early-evening events that celebrate Harry Potter Book Night, and are offering a kit to help "plan and host an unforgettable evening".
If you're a bookseller, librarian or teacher you're eligible to get the kit as long as you register by 28 November here. In the meantime, you have just over four months to start planning your party.
Harry Potter tops list of Facebook users' favourite books
Have you named the 10 books which influenced you most greatly on Facebook? Because hundreds of thousands have, and of 130,000 status updates, Harry Potter has been mentioned in 21 per cent of them.
How Jonny Duddle reimagined Harry Potter for a new generation
Jonny Duddle, children's illustrator and author, tells The Telegraph about his work and inspirations for drawing the new Harry Potter covers - including the consultation on process with JK Rowling and what the fans have said about his new Harry. See his works-in-progress here
New writing from JK Rowling on Pottermore
Rowling has picked up her quill again to reveal more about wizarding singing sensation Celestina Warbeck, who has eight homes, three marriages and a flock of pure-bred rough-coated Crups.
The Potter author's piece reads a bit like a Warbeck Wikipedia entry, with information on her fundraising efforts for St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries (where Neville Longbottom's parents spent a lot of his childhood) and her disagreements with the Ministry for Magic over Hallo'ween celebrations. There's also an audio clip of her song, You Stole My Cauldron But You Can't Have My Heart.
More relevatory, however, is a more personal exerpt from Rowling, in which she says that this "off-stage" character has existed as long as the Harry Potter series has: "I always imagined her to resemble Shirley Bassey in both looks and style...'Celestina' was simply begging to be scooped up and attached to a glamourous witch".
Daniel Radcliffe: 'I wasn't very good in Harry Potter'
In an interview Radcliffe bemoaned his early break into acting, saying: "The moments I'm not as proud of, mistakes other actors get to make in rehearsal rooms or at drama school, are all on film for everyone to see."
Universal unveils Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Japan
A version of Florida's Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, and the Hogwarts film stars Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) and Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) turned up for the occasion. One question: when do we get one in the UK?
Harry Potter's return
A Pottermore update written by JK Rowling in the guise of Rita Skeeter, the gossip columnist from wizarding newspaper The Daily Prophet, gives (dubious) insight into how Harry, Ron and Hermione are getting on in their adult lives.
Harry, now 34, is working as an auror and is spoting a mysterious wound on his cheekbone, as well as grey streaks in his hair. His wife Ginny is reporting on the Quidditch World Cup while her brother Ron has joined the Weasley's family joke shop business. Hermione, who is married to Ron, has naturally gone on to have a brilliant career as Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
Texas shooting suvivor receives a letter from Dumbledore
Fifteen-year-old Cassidy Stay was the sole survivor of a shooting which killed her parents and four siblings. At their funeral, she read a quote from Hogwarts headmaster, Albus Dumbledore: "Happiness can be found even in the darkest times if one only remembers to turn on the light."
Her strength and tribute moved people around the world, and after an online campaign to arrange a meeting between Stay and JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author wrote her a letter in the famous purple ink favoured by Dumbledore. Stay also received a wand, an admission letter to Hogwarts and a signed copy of the third Harry Potter book.
New cover revealed!
The first cover of seven that have been redesigned by illustrator Jonny Duddle is revealed. Duddle says: "I couldn’t have asked for more enjoyable subject matter. It’s exciting, daunting and I feel the weight of responsibility, and I’m just hoping that my illustrations faithfully reflect the characters and world created by JK Rowling."
Harry Potter artwork on sale at $20,000
Cash burning a hole in your pocket? British illustrator Cliff Wright drew the original book covers and his sketches for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban are going under the hammer.
JK Rowling: I will never top Harry Potter
In a rare public interview, Rowling admitted that she's known for 13 years - since 2000 - that she will never beat the success of Harry Potter. But the bestselling author is remarkably positive about that realisation, saying that her approach is: "how incredibly marvellous and liberating that I made money beyond my wildest dreams and I can affect issues I really care about".
Thankfully, Harry's runaway success won't stop her from writing.
Fantastic Beasts could be the first in a franchise
Warner Bros CEO Kevin Tsujihara suggested that there could be more where Fantastic Beasts came from, and that they're "going to build a film franchise", giving the spin-off film the Harry Potter treatment.
Tsuijihara also said that the film will have a similar look and feel to the previous Hogwarts films, but there is still no information on a release date or filming location.
JK Rowling to make screenwriting debut in new Harry Potter spin-off
A new Hogwarts film will soon be upon us. Rowling will write her first ever screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, a textbook used by Harry, Ron, Hermione and other wizarding students and will follow the life of its author, Newt Scamander, in 1930s New York.