Sirius Black's Harry Potter News

Sky Movies are offering the ultimate Christmas television gift as customers in the UK will be invited to vote on which films they’d like to see on Christmas and Boxing Day to help create the best ever Christmas Day schedule. Sky Movies will offer a selection of lucky customers, who have voted, the chance to dedicate a special Christmas Day message before each film is broadcast.

To vote for Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone or another classic like The Great Escape and The Sound of Music to more contemporary films such as The Dark Knight and Sex & The City to appear in the Sky Movies schedule, customers need to visit http://www.sky.com/vote and pick their favourite film. The voting will run until 26th November.

The top twenty films selected in the vote will be played out on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. All those who have voted for the top twenty films will be put into a prize draw and twenty winners will be selected at random to win a prize package of 32” Samsung HD Ready TV, Sky+HD free for a year and to see their dedication on screen before the film plays out.

That's a great prize!


Source: -

As with every December within the past few years, ABC Family is once again running the Potter films as part of their 25 Days of Christmas special. This year will be extra exciting because they've announced some cool sneak peeks at Half-Blood Prince:

To add to the magic, ABC Family will also be airing exclusive first looks at the new film, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (opening in theatres July 17, 2009), throughout the weekend’s three-day event. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Michael Gambon discuss the upcoming film’s exciting storylines, as well as revealing insider information. ABC Family’s first looks at the latest Harry Potter feature film also offer viewers a sneak peek of never-before-seen footage of love running rampant through Hogwarts, a look into Tom Riddle’s past and an introduction of Hogwarts new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Horace Slughorn.

Below is the schedule for the films that weekend:
Friday, December 5th:
(7:30 – 11:00 PM ET/PT) “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”

Saturday, December 6th
(1:30 – 5:00 PM ET/PT) “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”
(5:00 – 9:00 PM ET/PT) “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”
(9:00 PM – 12:00 AM ET/PT) “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”

Sunday, December 7th
(12:30 – 4:30 PM ET/PT) “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”
(4:30 – 7:30 PM ET/PT) “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”
(7:30 – 11:00 PM ET/PT) “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (extended edition with deleted scenes)

Source: Mugglenet

It's official: Eight will be the magic number for the "Harry Potter" film franchise.

After months of rumors, Warner Bros. and the producers of the massively successful movies will announce Thursday that they plan to split "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," J.K. Rowling's seventh and final "Potter" novel, into two blockbuster films -- one to be released in November 2010 and the second in May 2011.


Source: LA Times

Several press conferences were held in London for Order of the Phoenix over this past weekend, with another one taking place just this morning. Now videos are starting to pour in - click here to view one from GMTV (with Dan), one from Sunrise (with a variety of cast), and one from Sky News (too with a variety of cast).

Entertainment Weekly has named J.K. Rowling their “Entertainer of the Year” for 2007 (cover here).The magazine says the reason they selected the Harry Potter author as their top entertainer was “because she did something very, very hard, and she did it very, very well, thus pleasing hundreds of millions of children and adults very, very much. In an era of videogame consoles, online multiplayer ”environments,” and tinier-is-better mobisodes, minisodes, and webisodes, she got people to tote around her big, fat old-fashioned printed-on-paper books as if they were the hottest new entertainment devices on the planet.”

JKRowling.com has recently been updated with several new features, including a special time turner on the Room of Requirement page. This enables visitors to view previous times in which the door on the site has been open.

Also, the Wizard of the Month section has been restructured so previous months and their respective wizards can be viewed.

You can also find out about the lawsuit that Jo and Warner Bros. has filed against the HP Lexicon and how that is progressing as well.

Warner Brothers has announced this evening that the Harry Potter series is the largest-grossing film franchise to date globally, surpassing Star Wars and and James Bond. Totaling $4.47 billion in ticket sales (with two films left to go, WB points out), several high-ups at Warner Brothers are quoted in the press release:
In making the announcement, Alan Horn [President & Chief Operating Officer] said, “It would be an understatement to say we are proud of the success of the Harry Potter films. We also want to congratulate all of the extraordinary actors, filmmakers and artists who have shared this remarkable cinematic journey with us.”