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Harry News and Commentary

Rowling and Bloomsbury Accused of Plagiarism

by Dave the Longwinded on June 15, 2009

A Yahoo! article indicates that a legal action filed in England is claiming that J.K. Rowling copied significant portions of Goblet of Fire from a 1987 children’s book written by Adrian Jacobs, called Willy the Wizard.

It named the estate’s trustee as Paul Allen, and said that Rowling had copied “substantial parts” of “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard — No 1 Livid Land” written by Jacobs in 1987.

It added that the plot of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire copied elements of the plot of Willy the Wizard, including a wizard contest, and that the Potter series borrowed the idea of wizards traveling on trains.

“Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures,” the estate statement said. [click to continue…]

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No Half-Blood Prince Secret Screening

by Travis Prinzi on March 13, 2009

Mugglenet’s got the scoop – if you’ve heard about this screening, it’s not a true story. There was no secret screening that fans were upset about.

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A Published Lexicon, and a Beedle Movie

by Travis Prinzi on December 9, 2008

Steve Vander Ark’s Lexicon is finally going to be published, after some revisions to the book are made, putting it in compliance with the court’s ruling.

Warner Bros. is talking about a Beedle movie. As I was reading the book, I thought, “A movie of these five stories might be interesting, if put in the right hands.” But one thought has caused this idea to come crashing down on my head:

Michael Gambon as Dumbledore the narrator.

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Rowling Wins Lexicon Court Case

September 8, 2008

JKR/WB has won the court case against SVA/RDR.
Plaintiffs have shown that the Lexicon copies a sufficient quantity of the Harry Potter series to support finding a substantial similarity between the Lexicon and Rowling’s novels.The Lexicon draws 450 manuscript pages worth of material primarily from the 4,100-page Harry Potter series.
The full text of the decision.
J.K. Rowling Statement
“I took no pleasure [...]

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Half-Blood Prince Game, The Sequel!

August 22, 2008

by Dave
An article on The Leaky Cauldron has touched on a different issue concerning the Harry Potter videogames: the potential that they might keep making them after Deathly Hallows. The game industry does have a habit of running moneymaking franchises into the ground, especially if they have marketing tie-ins that reach audiences outside of [...]

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Half-Blood Prince Game

August 21, 2008

by Dave
So, now that the movie has been delayed, what does this mean for the videogame? Apparently nothing. Some footage was shown at the Lepzig Games Convention (YouTube link here) in Germany over the last couple of days, and the release date is still slated for this November. The link is worth a look just to [...]

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Alan Horn Statement on Half-Blood Prince Film Delay

August 19, 2008

by Travis
Alan Horn of Warner Bros. issued a statement today in response to the many complaints about the delayed release of Half-Blood Prince:
Many of you have written to me to express your disappointment in our moving Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to Summer 2009.
Please be assured that we share your love for Harry Potter and would certainly never [...]

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Why The Half-Blood Prince Movie Delay?

August 19, 2008

by Travis
Eric D. Snider debunks the following 4 Myths about the Half-Blood Prince movie delay:

Half-Blood Prince was moved because WB was scared of Twilight. (That one’s just silly.)
It got moved because WB was nervous about Daniel Radcliffe’s extra-curricular activities. (Referring to his appeared naked in Equus)
WB moved Half-Blood Prince to the one-year anniversary of The [...]

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Entertainment Weekly’s Prince Cover Mistake

August 18, 2008

by Johnny
Entertainment Weekly, who is owned by Warner Bros. parent company Time Warner, Inc., featured the face of Daniel Radcliffe in their new Fall Preview issue that hit newstands in the middle of last week. The only problem is that the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will not be released until July 17, [...]

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Potter Fans Happy About Half-Blood Prince Movie Delay

August 17, 2008

I suggested, upon hearing the news of the delay of the Half-Blood Prince movie, that the only silver lining to the news would be for Azkatraz 2009 attendees. The LA Times got a note from a member of Team Azkatraz, Heidi Tandy, saying that very thing. There is no way they’ll be able to accommodate everyone [...]

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Marauder’s Map: Your Guide to Potter Events From Now Till Half-Blood Prince

August 15, 2008

by Travis Prinzi
Despite the fact that the supposed next big Potter event – the release of the Half-Blood Prince film – has been delayed till next summer, the Potterverse will be alive and kicking, with lots of key events, until that film release. Here’s a breakdown, in as close to chronological order as possible. Consider this [...]

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New Half-Blood Prince Pictures

August 15, 2008

Five more pictures from the Half-Blood Prince movie we now won’t see until July 17 of next year. Images of Snape, Bellatrix, and Slughorn, and the Slug Club are of interest. (HT to HPANA)

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Half-Blood Prince Movie Delayed Until Summer 2009

August 14, 2008

This is going to disappoint a lot of folks (myself included). Warner Bros has apparently decided to change the release of the film version of Half-Blood Prince to Summer 2009 (instead of Thanksgiving of this year).
“Our reasons for shifting ‘Half-Blood Prince’ to summer are twofold: we know the summer season is an ideal window for [...]

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Rowling is Gold: A Simple 800-word Prequel Helps Break a Record

August 9, 2008

It was a simple 800-word story scribbled on two sides of a postcard, but it helped What’s Your Story? sell out in a day, breaking the record for the fastest-selling short story collection in history. From BBC:
What’s Your Story? contains 13 postcard-sized tales by authors including Doris Lessing, Nick Hornby and Sebastian Faulks.
More than 10,000 copies [...]

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Tales of Beedle the Bard Cover Art

July 31, 2008

For the standard edition:

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Pre-Order The Tales of Beedle the Bard at Amazon.com

July 31, 2008

by Travis
I decided this deserved its own post.
Exciting news: Amazon is selling copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, available for pre-order! (If you decide to order a copy, please do so by clicking to it from this site; that way, you can support The Hog’s Head at the same time!) Proceeds go to [...]

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Image from Half-Blood Prince Trailer

July 28, 2008

Update 2: I took down the poll and its post until the Half-Blood Prince trailer is released.
Update: Another image, this one of Dumbledore and some fire – probably in the cave?

HPANA reports the release of an image of young Tom Riddle from the trailer for Half-Blood Prince to be released tonight at 9pm EST on AOL.com. [...]

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Harry Potter This Week: Half Blood Prince Trailer, Harry’s Birthday

July 27, 2008

It should be a fun forthcoming week in Harry Potter’s world.
Tuesday, the 29th, the Half-Blood Prince Trailer will be appearing exclusively on AOL. It will be our first live-action look at the new film. I really enjoyed what Yates did with Order of the Phoenix, but I have to admit I’m a bit nervous about this [...]

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HP a “New Classic”

June 25, 2008

by Dave
Update: I edited this post for some grammatical mistakes. Sorry…I was in a bit of a hurry yesterday when I wrote it.
Jamie and I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly, my favorite section of which is Stephen King’s monthly column in the back of the magazine. While the magazine certainly isn’t especially [...]

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HP “Prequel”: What Do You Think?

May 29, 2008

by Dave
Check out this news article from the Chicago Sun-Times. For a charity event, several major UK authors were asked to write something on a card to be auctioned to raise money to help those with dyslexia:
Rowling used both sides of her card to hand-write a prequel to her seven-book Harry Potter saga.
Rowling’s “prequel” [...]

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Rowling Wins Court Case

May 7, 2008

No, not that court case. This one:
Harry Potter author JK Rowling won a landmark privacy ruling in her battle to ban publication of covert long lens pictures taken of her son when he was 18 months old.

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Potter Out of the Top Ten

May 1, 2008

For the first time in 10 years, there are no Harry Potter books in the Top Ten Bestseller list.
(HT to Glenn Lucke)

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Rowling vs. the Lexicon, Again…

April 15, 2008

by Dave
The copyright case Rowling brought against Steve Vander Ark goes to trial this week, as I’m sure some of you read. I’m not going to offer up anything new about the case, copyright infringement, or her ownership over her work (authorial or otherwise).
I thought I’d give you a couple of links:
This one takes [...]

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Rowling on Dumbledore’s Sexuality (again)

March 11, 2008

There are a lot of comments I want to make, and later tonight I may modify this post to include them, but for now, I figured I’d just report it: Rowling’s talking about Dumbledore’s sexuality again, and this statement is packed with stuff that is bound to generate an opinion or two (or thirty).
“It is [...]

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Harry Potter: Addictive?

February 24, 2008

by Johnny
This is several days old, but not covered here. MTV News broke the story about a new study that concludes that Harry Potter, big surprise, can be addictive:
They surveyed fans before the book’s release, upon completion of the book and six months afterwards as a follow-up. The 10 percent of respondents that Rudski considers [...]

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