Harry, Ron and Hermione are on the run, thrust into what Ron (Rupert Grint) calls ‘a scary and unpredictable world where anyone could be working for Voldemort’ as they search for the remaining horcruxes in order to defeat the Dark Lord.
To whet your appetite we’ve conjured up some truly wizard facts about ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’:
• The film’s budget is estimated to have been £150 million. John Hurt (Mr Ollivander in the films) ranted recently about the ‘quite absurd’ amount of money spent on ‘Harry Potter’ films. He said: ‘I look around and there are three costumes there, none of which are likely to be worn, and they’re all replicas of each other. It’s a vacuous waste of money and it drives me insane.’
• The two ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ films are the first in the ‘Harry Potter’ series to be released in cinemas in complete 3D versions. For ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince’ only some scenes were available.
• Daniel Radcliffe's stunt double David Holmes was seriously injured in January 2009 when he fell from a harness. The former gymnast was at Leavesden film studios (Watford, Herts) rehearsing a flying scene that involved an explosion when the accident occurred.
• And it wasn’t only his double sustaining injuries - Radcliffe himself got a war wound. During filming, a giant snake that Harry was fighting was simulated by a stick with a boxing glove on the end, held by the stunt coordinator. Radcliffe was caught by surprise and received a blow in the face that knocked him down, but seems thrilled with his injury. In a recent interview he said: ‘Until now nothing really bad happened to me, only a few scratches. But I'm happy because I finally got a big black eye during the shooting of ‘Deathly Hallows’.’
• It was all drama at Leavesden as in March 2009, soon after Holmes’ injury, a fire started on set. The fire started during the filming of ‘a big special effects scene’ and took 40 minutes to extinguish but caused no injuries. Apparently there was no damage to the studios and the actual set was ‘due to be rebuilt anyway’ for a new battle scene in ‘Deathly Hallows’ Part 2.
• Following the enthusiastic reception of his birthday suit in ‘Equus’, Radcliffe will apparently be delighting female fans again by appearing naked in the new film. When a horcrux forces Ron to imagine his worst fears, playing on his insecurities, one of the images he sees is Harry and Hermione kissing and embracing. ‘Deathly Hallows’ Director David Yates has supposedly confirmed that at this point Harry will be nude, and that he bares all a second time at the Kings Cross scene later in the film.
• Rhys Ifans is thrilled ‘that they thought of me to play a cross-eyed wizard’ (Xenophilus Lovegood, Luna Lovegood’s father) and honoured to act alongside big name actors like Maggie Smith and Michael Gambon but admits that he hasn’t read ‘The Deathly Hallows’ book and is ‘not a big fan of Harry Potter’!
• In the first film, Griphook the goblin was played by Verne Troyer, one of the few Americans in the cast, but voiced by Warwick Davis (Professor Flitwick). In ‘Deathly Hallows’ Davis is both Griphook’s body and his voice, whilst continuing to play Flitwick,
• ‘Deathly Hallows’ is the first time Brendan Gleeson and David O’Hara have acted in the same film since ‘Braveheart’ in 1995. Gleeson plays ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody and O’Hara plays Albert Runcorn – the Ministry of Magic official who Harry impersonates with Polyjuice Potion in order to enter the Ministry.
• Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy) considered not returning for this film as he feared he would have little or no time on screen, after his character was imprisoned at the end of the fifth book, but on meeting J.K. Rowling and begging to be released from prison, she told him ‘You’re out. Chapter One.’ and he signed on for ‘Deathly Hallows’.
• J.K Rowling told Alan Rickman the reasoning behind Severus Snape’s strange behaviour towards Harry years before it was disclosed in the ‘Deathly Hallows’ book. Snape’s love for Lily Potter (née Evans), Harry’s mother, is the reason he both detests and wants to protect ‘the boy who lived’, and Rowling claims ‘He needed to understand, I think, and does completely understand and did completely understand where this bitterness towards this boy, who's living proof of [Lily's] preference for another man, came from.’
• In the epilogue in ‘Deathly Hallows’ Part 2 the cast play their characters in the future, using a combination of prosthetics, computer generated imagery and convincing acting, as in ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’. In this epilogue the wife of Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), Astoria Greengrass, is played by his real life girlfriend Jade Olivia.
credit : telegraph.co.uk
Oh Simon! You amused me!
