Harry's magical return
Much-awaited fifth installment appears on shelves at the "witching hour"
(CNN) -- Harry Potter is an odd candidate for the full front-page treatment.
For starters, he's an English orphan who lives with a dysfunctional aunt, uncle and cousin
in a drab suburb. He's not particularly attractive or smooth. And to top it off, he's fictitious.
But to legions of young readers (and plenty of adults) who are hooked on the story of
Harry's transformation from unwanted child to legendary wizard, the latest installment --
"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" -- is one of the year's most eagerly anticipated
events.
In fact, the six-year-old Harry Potter phenomenon, the brainchild of British author J.K. Rowling, is a study in superlatives.
The fourth volume, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," quickly sold out the largest first printing in U.S. publishing history -- 3.8 million copies. More than 175 million copies of the book series are now available in at least 59 languages.
The series dominated the New York Times bestseller list for so long that the newspaper's book section created a separate list for children's fiction to accommodate the books.
"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," the first film based on the books, grossed around $1 billion worldwide plus another $1 billion in toys, video games, and other products. The second movie repeated the success of the first.
Some critics say the movies watered down the literary product, and contend that many children have lost their overriding thirst for all things Harry Potter since the series' first book was released in England in summer 1997.
But many others disagree, saying the newest release should equal, if not surpass, the hype and sales of previous books.
The book's U.S. publisher, Scholastic, isn't taking any chances. Scholastic is spending between $3-4 million to market the book, distributing some 3 million bumper stickers, 400,000 buttons, 50,000 window displays and 24,000 stand-up posters with countdown clocks, according to The Associated Press. Scholastic announced it is printing 6.8 million copies of "Phoenix" and said it would print an additional 1.7 million copies, which would be an all-time U.S. publishing record.
If advance orders are any indication, "Phoenix" is guaranteed to be the one of the best selling books of all time. It has been atop Amazon.com's best-seller list since the day the Web site began taking reservations, with nearly 750,000 in advance sales by mid-June.
When "Phoenix" finally goes on sale a minute after midnight on June 21, Scholastic won't be disappointed, said Seth Siegel, a marketing specialist and chairman of the licensing division at The Beanstalk Group, a brand licensing and promotional marketing firm.
"It will sell millions in a matter of days," he said. "There's no question -- it will be a tsunami."
Classic themes and characters
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Actor Daniel Radcliffe plays Harry Potter in the movie versions of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Storne," "Harry Potter and the Chaimber of Secrets" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," which comes out in 2004.
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So what is it about Harry Potter that makes grade-school children forsake video games to read hundreds of pages about him?
Harry "doesn't care what other people tell him to do," said one young fan. "If he wants to do it, he'll just go right out and do it."
That Huck Finn-like disdain for rules is just one of the classic themes embedded in the Harry Potter books. The downtrodden child who discovers a glorious destiny is a spin on the Cinderella story.
Harry's friends, the loyal wiseacre Ron Weasley and the earnest do-gooder Hermione Granger, are also classic character types. Then there are well-drawn nemeses, including pampered brat Draco Malfoy and potions teacher Severus Snape.
The series is packed with quirky touches that appeal to adults as well as children. A favorite wizard candy is Bertie Botts' Every Flavor Beans, jelly beans that really do include every flavor, from chocolate and custard to liver and ear wax. The annual Hogwarts Express leaves from platform 9 and three-quarters, between 9:00 and 10:00 with an entrance invisible to muggles (as wizards call non-magical folk), at London's King's Cross Station. The school song is a slate of lyrics floating in mid-air, which each student sings to whatever tune he or she chooses, in unison.
Some of the twists of language also garner grown-up readers' attentions.
Wizards who think nothing of "apparating," disappearing in one place and appearing in another, are bewildered and bemused when they have to call Harry on the telephone. Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley are wizards' districts in London. Characters' names are often Latin plot clues or references to classical mythology.
Not everyone is a fan, though. Some parents worry that the Harry Potter books encourage children to rebel, while others are concerned their emphasis on magic creates an unhealthy interest in the occult. The American Library Association reported that the Harry Potter books collectively rank number one on the association's 2002 list of books challenged as inappropriate for schools and public.
But the complaints have not derailed the publishing juggernaut that started, as it does every year at Hogwarts, with a train ride.
'I just thought it would be so much fun to write'
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The Harry Potter series transformed author J.K. Rowling from an obscure and struggling single mother into one of the wealthiest celebrities in the world.
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The year was 1990, and J.K. Rowling was traveling from Manchester to London. She said the idea came to her all at once: A young orphan foisted onto his boorish relatives discovers that he's a wizard. Not just any wizard, mind you, but a legendary one.
Lord Voldemort, an evil wizard so fearsome most wizards call him "he who must not be named" or simply "you-know-who," kills Harry's parents in his quest to eliminate good wizards. He then turns on the infant Harry, who survives the attack but gets a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. Valdemort, robbed of his power, disappears, but not forever.
"I had this very physical response to this idea," Rowling told CNN's Larry King in fall 2000. "I just thought it would be so much fun to write."
Rowling mapped out a seven-book series, each volume covering one year in Harry's education at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. During the five years that she honed the idea, Rowling's mother died, she lost her job, she married and divorced, and her daughter was born. The unemployed single mom considered her writing an indulgence.
"I never dreamed that Harry Potter was going to be the thing that saved us," Rowling said. "Harry Potter was my personal ambition and I often felt selfish for pursuing it."
That ambition bore fruit when "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" unexpectedly hit the adult-fiction bestseller list in Britain in the summer of 1997. The following year the book repeated the feat in the United States, where it was published under the title "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."
The first book in the series, "Sorcerer's Stone," begins with a listless Harry living unhappily in the nondescript suburb of Little Whinging with the muggle Dursleys -- his Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon and cousin Dudley. As he turns 11, Harry meets a mountain of a man named Hagrid, and Harry and the reader are introduced to a world of magic that had been there all the time, right under their noses.
The story struck a chord first with young readers and their parents before spreading by word of mouth to include fans from every age group, whether they had children or not. Some critics compared Rowling's work to that of C.S. Lewis, Roald Dahl and Lewis Carroll.
What Rowling thought would be "quite an obscure book ... [with] a handful of devotees" turned into a bona fide craze -- and brought her wealth and fame.
Forbes magazine reported that Rowling took home $131.4 million between June 2002 to June 2003, ranking her 4th in pay on its annual list of richest celebrities. Rowling is also a philanthropist, having donated a six-figure sum to a charity for single mothers.
"By anyone's standards, certainly mine, I'm now rich," Rowling said.
When Rowling went to Buckingham Palace in 2001 to receive the Order of the British Empire, Prince Charles confessed to being a huge Harry Potter fan and asked about the progress of the movie series.
Harrywood
Warner Brothers won the bidding war for the movie rights to "The Sorcerer's Stone" and picked director Chris Columbus ("Home Alone") to direct. (Warner Brothers is an AOL Time Warner company, as is CNN.com.) The selection of an American director and rumors that American actor Haley Joel Osment ("The Sixth Sense") would star as Harry distressed some fans, especially British ones.
But Columbus said that he would cast the entire film with British actors. He also vowed not to combine any of the books into a single film or otherwise deviate from the plot.
"My goal was to be true to the integrity of the material," Columbus said. "I just felt these things were essential to making the film work -- make the film honest."
In a move reminiscent of the Scarlett O'Hara casting call for "Gone With the Wind," Warner Brothers announced a worldwide search for the role of Harry. Thousands of young actors responded, and British actor Daniel Radcliffe, 11, got the lead. Each snippet of information fueled buzz on Internet fan sites, and every new commercial or trailer was a premiere of its own.
"I have read the least of Harry Potter [of anyone] in my class," Radcliffe said sheepishly, and I managed to get the part somehow."
The supporting cast is a who's who of British actors: the late Richard Harris as Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore; Maggie Smith as the stern assistant headmistress and transfiguration teacher Minerva McGonagall; Alan Rickman as Snape; Robbie Coltrane as the hefty gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid; Kenneth Branagh as the vain and flamboyant professor Gilderoy Lockhart; and former Monty Python member John Cleese as Nearly Headless Nick, a ghost whose name is a story in itself.
Fans owe the casting of Harris as Dumbledore to an 11-year-old girl.
"There was some hint in the paper that I was going to do it, and then there was a hint in the paper that I wasn't going to do it," Harris said. "So my granddaughter called me and said 'Papa, if you don't play Dumbledore, I'll never speak to you again.'"
Harris, who had been receiving treatment for Hodgkin's Disease, died on October 25, 2002, 10 days before the London premiere of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."
The future of the franchise
The Harry Potter franchise should continue rolling in the coming years.
The movies -- released in November 2001 and November 2002 -- have helped maintain Harry's high profile in the nearly three years since "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was released, Siegel said.
"You can track the release of the movies and [a spike in] book sales," he said. "The movies expanded the franchise."
The third movie in the franchise, based on "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," is set to open in 2004.
The child actors in the current films signed up for the first three films, leaving the prospect of future movie adaptations in flux.
Rowling has announced plans for at least two other books to close out the series -- but exactly when those books will be written and released remains up in the air.
The author herself, living with her husband and two children in Scotland, says she's happy -- if a bit flabbergasted -- to go along for the ride, wherever it leads.
"It always surprises me, it always surprises me to be recognized. It's odd ... but nice, very nice," she told CNN in November 2002.
-- CNN's Todd Leopold contributed to this report.
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