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29 March 2024

Fans ready for wizard romance

Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe at last week's London premiere. (AP)

Published
By Keith J Fernandez

Harry Potter might spell just the cure for these bleak recessionary times. The sixth instalment in the blockbuster franchise, which hits UAE screens on Thursday, has been lauded by critics as a light, high-school rom-com – which should be a perfect fit with the core teenage demographic target market.

"We expect overwhelming crowds of people on the opening weekends from families and teenagers to die hard adult supporters," says Michelle Walsh, Marketing Manager Middle East at Warner Bros Pictures. "We expect Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to do extremely well in line with previous Potter films, which were all successful in the UAE."

Advance tickets have gone on sale and are selling well. The film is being released to 38 screens across the UAE, with premieres set for CineStar Cinemas, Mall of the Emirates on Tuesday and Imax at Grand Cinemas, Ibn Battuta Mall, on Wednesday.

Internationally, too, pre-release buzz suggests the movie will add a sizeable chunk to the $4.5 billion (Dh16.5bn) in box-office receipts the franchise has already taken. Eight days ahead of its opening in the United States, the film accounted for 65 per cent of daily ticket sales, according to online ticketer Fandango, which put it ahead of current box-office champ Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and of 2007's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at similar points in their sales cycles.

"Half-Blood Prince is turning out to be one of our fastest-selling titles of the year," Fandango COO Rick Butler said. There will be eight films in all, with the final volume divided into two. The seventh film will hit cinemas in November 2010 and the eighth in the summer of 2011.

In Half-Blood Prince, which sets the scene for the action in the final films, Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of the Hogwarts school of magic, grooms Harry for a final showdown with Lord Voldemort, whose presence is felt in colour-drained canvases.

But while menace looms, culminating in the death of a central character, romance blossoms between teenaged wizards, providing for more comedy than expected. Harry has feelings for Ginny, while Ron is caught in a love triangle with the attentions of the over-affectionate Lavender Brown throwing Hermione into a jealous rage.

All of which should bring in the fans, despite suggestions in some dark quarters that this instalment has been cursed following several associated incidents.

Just hours before the London premiere, police charged Jamie Waylett, 19, who plays side-kick Vincent Crabbe to villain Draco Malfoy in the movies, with illegally growing cannabis plants.

One of the main actors, Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley, attended the premiere after making a swift recovery from a mild case of swine flu last week.

But perhaps most tragic of all was the death of 18-year-old Robert Knox, who plays Marcus Belby, was stabbed to death while trying to protect his younger brother from a knifeman in May last year. (With agencies)



I'm No Heartthrob: Radcliffe

Daniel Radcliffe, the British actor who plays boy wizard Harry Potter, laughed off suggestions he has become a heartthrob on the eve of Tuesday's premiere of the sixth film in the series.

Radcliffe, 19, who won the role of Harry as a cherubic 11-year-old, has updated his image by appearing naked on stage in the play Equus between filming adaptations of JK Rowling's phenomenally successful books.

But he said most fans still think of him as the bespectacled Harry. "If girls like me, it has not been proven yet," Radcliffe told journalists ahead of the London premiere of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

"Okay, I go to the red carpet in Tokyo and thousands of girls scream at me... but the me that sits in a darkened room watching cricket for eight hours with a bowl of pasta in his underwear and socks is not quite so attractive to girls."

Radcliffe admitted in an interview that the male actors on the Potter set had felt male hormones kick as they grew into adolescents on set, telling Esquire magazine: "We were all unbelievably horny from about the third film to probably about the end of the fifth; then it all settled down."

But Emma Watson, who plays the geeky Hermione Granger in the films, said fans should forget any hopes of her, Radcliffe and Rupert Grint – who plays gawky Ron Weasley in the films – pairing off with each other in real life. "When we were younger, we were always going back and forth to school so it is not as if Rupert and Dan were the only boys I saw," the 19-year-old said. "I know it would be of huge interest if we were hooking up. But we grew up together and we are just like siblings."

Radcliffe already has a girlfriend: he met Laura O'Toole, four years his senior, on the set of Equus. Watson has been dating 27-year-old financier Jay Barrymore for over a year, while Grint is currently single. "Yes, I suppose I am looking for a girlfriend," he told thelondonpaper.com. "I like weird girls," he added.

 

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