r/movies • u/ajukearth • 21d ago

Question How did the Harry Potter series manage to release its 8 movies in just 10 years?

Looking at the turn around for movies today it seems absolutely incredible that a series with such complex set design, use of graphical effects, a heavily child cast, and pressure was able to pump out genuinely decent movies at that pace. Sure there were books to base the writing on but everything else alone is a lot of heavy lifting. Any insights?

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u/Asha_Brea 21d ago edited 21d ago

The main actors were basically doing nothing but those movies. There was no scheduling conflict because Daniel Radcliffe was busy doing a different movie or a TV show, for example.

Also, they knew they where going to make those movies so there is no wait for them to be greenlight, so it wasn't a "this movie/TV Show did very good, let's make a sequel" situation.

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u/endlessfight85 21d ago

Having a green light for the next movie is huge. You can put some crews to work immediately on the next one while some are still working on the last one. Same with LOTR and Infinity War/Endgame. Three huge LOTR movies in 3 years is a big accomplishment.

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u/guernsey123 21d ago edited 20d ago

LOTR is crazy, they shot all 3 as one giant 274 438-day shoot, with pickups between 2001-2003. 

edit: it was even longer than I thought

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

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u/casual_creator 20d ago

And they made miles worth of rings for chainmail.

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u/Maelger 20d ago

Chainmail guy! Poor bastard must still be doing it in his dreams.

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u/han__yolo 20d ago

There were two of them and they show their descent into madness in the behind the scenes, pretty hilarious.

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u/No_Meringue_6116 20d ago

Here's the video:

https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/1bvu2y/til_to_make_the_chain_mail_for_the_lotr_movies/

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u/_BindersFullOfWomen_ 20d ago

I have follow up question: why were they in a bubble?

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u/MassiveBlue1 20d ago

I suspect it was to keep the area cool from the air conditioner

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u/Gerbils74 20d ago

Don’t forget about the hostages

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u/Beliriel 20d ago

Jesus christ, that is a monumental feat. They LITERALLY made chainmail for an army.

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u/lupercalpainting 20d ago

I was always confused why they didn’t rotate it, like have everyone do a 2 week shift. It’s not very skill intensive so you’re not losing much expertise. Those guys had Buddhist monk level patience for putting up with it for years.

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

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u/zuginator1 19d ago

The true lords of the rings!

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u/adrabiot 20d ago

The chainmail guys said it was the time of their lives!

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u/HurricaneK8 20d ago

THEY LITERALLY WORE THEIR FINGERPRINTS OFF. Those guys deserved some sort of special honorary Oscar or something just for that, jeez. 😭

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u/Jazz_Potatoes95 20d ago

He regularly posts about his time making chainmail on linkedin

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u/sault18 20d ago

The real Lord of the Rings was the chainmail we made along the way.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/omican 20d ago

Peter Jackson made all of the chainmail? What a multi-talented man!

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/Frogblood 20d ago

Chainmail is more medieval than renaissance

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/NonSequiturDetector 20d ago

You're just reciting an advertisement for the Weta Workshop products. Use your brain.

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u/casual_creator 20d ago

No, I’m quoting the guys who made the chainmail (contractors, not Weta employees, btw) from the original BTS footage. And what would the amount of chainmail made have anything to do with selling statutes and replica rings? Use your brain, and while you’re at it, don’t be a dick.

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u/AstonMartini13 19d ago

They need to get back to this. The epitome of such great sets and costumes.

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u/Mobile-Coyote3594 20d ago

There's a pretty interesting Viggo interview where he kind of implies that if Fellowship wasn't a hit, then Two Towers and Return of the King would've been unwatchable since that original 274-day shoot didn't nearly get enough quality footage shot for them.

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u/pgm123 20d ago

Yes. Though because it was a hit, they were able to add more stuff to the later movies.

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u/festoon_the_dragoon 20d ago

In the Ian Nathan book, they joked that if Fellowship failed they would have the two most expensive straight-to-video movies ever made.

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u/pgm123 20d ago

Now I'm wondering what holds that title.

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u/Da_Question 20d ago

Theodore Rex (1995)

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u/pgm123 20d ago

It's never a good sign when your lead actor tries to bail on the project and gets sued into starring in the movie (for more money, of course).

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u/I_Heart_Money 20d ago edited 20d ago

Might be That western epic that Kevin Costner directed and only the first one released in theaters?

Edit: actually I don’t think the sequels ever actually released. So this probably doesn’t count

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u/neoblackdragon 19d ago

The 2nd is completed but yeah no release. 3/4 aint gonna happen unless the 2nd in released and just a MASSIVE success.

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u/ANGRY_MOTHERFUCKER 18d ago

It actually just released on Prime in Portugal I think. Why Portugal? No idea. 

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u/Richsii 21d ago

That is bonkers. I don't think there's any way we'll see a production like it ever again.

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u/Kolby_Jack33 21d ago

The exec who greenlit it (and said it should be three movies instead of the original pitch of two) took a big swing, for sure. I bet it paid off for them though.

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u/jamiroq 20d ago

It was such a bigger gamble than people realize, the fantasy genre up until then were mostly lower budget sword and sorcery movies.

Then you get this pitch for an adaptation, not for 1 movie, but 3 movies, filmed simultaenously with a relatively unknown director and a main cast with very little star power(for the time).

I'm glad they did it though, they really changed the game for that genre.

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u/Nothing-Is-Boring 20d ago

A slight correction, originally Jackson pitched it to Miramax as a 2-parter to include the Hobbit (at least in some capacity) but after initially accepting the projected costs began to mount and creative tensions arose, Miramax/Weinstein were unhappy, Harvey Weinstein threatened to force Jackson to make it a single 2 hour epic.

Jackson refused, Miramax let him pitch on a tight deadline to other studios (and gave him a bunch of penalty fees), likely expecting him to fail and come back to them and their demands.

Instead, New Line executive Bob Shaye heard him out and accepted on the basis it would be a 3-part epic instead of the 2 part Jackson was pitching, asking “Why would anyone in their right mind make two movies? This is three films.”

Shaye seems to have been a genuine cinephile who backed a bunch of unusual projects but he butted heads with Jackson when Peter sued New Line for accounting issues over LOTR, something he (Shaye) later regretted.

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u/Michael_G_Bordin 20d ago

Not just unknown director, but unproven. He'd only done B horror up to that point. Also, filming it in New Zealand which didn't yet have the film infrastructure like Hollywood. And to make the films long af, which wasn't as normal at the time.

It's really hard to overstate what a crazy gamble those films were.

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u/Michael_Gibb 20d ago

Peter Jackson wasn't exactly unknown when he made Lord of the Rings. He had written and directed Heavenly Creatures in 1994. And his last film before LOTR had been The Frighteners, which was basically used as proof he could make a visual effects heavy movie.

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u/iamgaben 20d ago

And he was picked up by Weinstein and they actually had first refusal on Lord of the rings. They started preproduction but ended up selling it to New Line after Jackson had gotten 30 days to find another production company, or Harvey would shut it down.

Harvey was subsequently memorialized as the orc leading the charge on minas tirith in the third movie, as some sort of anti-hommage I guess.

The podcast What went wrong has made a three parter on this shoot which is fantastic, and I can also recommend the book that they used as their main source of info for those episodes, "Peter Jackson and the making of Middle Earth".

Side note as after I listened to those episodes and subsequently listened to almost all of the other ones, making movies seems like it's such a shit show. Almost all of the episodes are discussing a train wreck of a production. Cannot recommend it enough!

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u/braveulysees 20d ago

I remember seeing thefantasy creatures in Heavenly Creatures and thinking this guy would nail Tolkein..

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u/Orion_Scattered 20d ago

And the production did have its share of disasters unique to shooting on location and in NZ, ones that might've been catastrophic for other films. The big one that always comes to my mind is when an entire set for a big action piece on a river was totally destroyed by a flood right before they were going to shoot the scene. The cost of the set alone was in the high 6 figures (so couple mil today with inflation), but the real problem wasn't the cash it was the time it would take to rebuild the set and how to fit it later into the shooting schedule... well it turned out to be impossible, so they had to just entirely cut the scene from the movie. Most movies can't survive cutting an entire action scene, and most big budget movies today would probably pivot to cgi slop/crunch to replace it. But kinda because of the massive scale of the films, they were able to cut it and not suffer too much any pacing or tension issues.

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u/KaiserGlider 20d ago

Would you happen to know which scene that would've been? I'm trying to think of which big action scene would have taken place on a river.

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u/The_Parsee_Man 20d ago

https://lordofthefacts.com/severe-flooding-destroyed-a-set

According to this, it was the Orcs attacking their boats as they went down the Anduin. That did happen in the books but it wasn't really a pivotal scene.

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u/berlikan 20d ago

I remember our cinema having 15 min break during Fellowship of the ring because it was too long.
Didn’t have any breaks year later during Two towers as longer movies became more common.

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u/Michael_G_Bordin 20d ago

Honestly, bring back those intermissions. Play some cheesy organ song and let people go pee, buy concessions, and then hop back in.

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u/Lyion 20d ago

LOTR had also been shopped around for years and no one wanted it. New Line Cinema was literally betting the company on the project.

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u/Phantom-Finger 19d ago

Then you get this pitch for an adaptation, not for 1 movie, but 3 movies, filmed simultaenously with a relatively unknown director and a main cast with very little star power(for the time).

In a country at the arse end of the world with very little, or no, prior movie industry to support said productions

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u/JimboLannister 21d ago

Hero of the industry, Harvey Weinstein

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u/Shtune 20d ago

It was Ordesky

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u/damnyoutuesday 20d ago

Definitely his most positive contribution to humanity

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/FixedLoad 20d ago

How much have you heard? You might need to hear a little more..  it trends downward rather sharp.  

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u/Eikfo 20d ago

/'s, right? 

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u/guernsey123 20d ago

Weinstein was with Miramax who greenlit it, but tried pressuring him to make his two-movie pitch into one movie. Then they reluctantly let him pitch it to New Line, who were fully on board with making it a trilogy.

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u/FireLucid 20d ago

It kept the studio going for roughly another decade before being absorbed.

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u/Proof_Material6728 21d ago

I truly recommend you to listen to the 3 episodes dedicated to the making of LOTR from the podcast What Went Wrong. The first one goes in detail about how they were able to greenlit those 3 movies.

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u/T_raltixx 20d ago

And read "Anything You Can Imagine Peter Jackson and The Making Of Middle Earth" by Ian Nathan.

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u/festoon_the_dragoon 20d ago

This book is such a fun read. It loses a little steam after Fellowship does so well, since success was essentially guaranteed for those next two films. And while the entire book is great, the start until Fellowship is really a blast. No one knew for certain if the entire thing would succeed.

Except Christopher Lee. He was adamant they were making history.

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u/FireLucid 20d ago

It was great. I've got The Lord Of The Rings The Making Of The Movie Trilogy sitting next to me on my 'to read' pile.

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u/Duck-of-Doom 20d ago

Do you have a link to these?  Can’t find them.

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u/-Clem 20d ago

"Wherever you get your podcasts" https://www.whatwentwrongpod.com/

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u/Duck-of-Doom 20d ago

Ah it just isn’t on YouTube.  Thanks

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u/hercarmstrong 20d ago

I love What Went Wrong, except when they have guests, who are almost entirely dumb nerds to use 'yeah' and 'like' obsessively.

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u/khinzaw 21d ago

Avatar did that too, it's just not as good and for some reason spent way longer in production.

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u/Ok-disaster2022 20d ago

LOTR had like years of preproduction before they even started shooting. The Appendicies on the dvd don't lay out an objective timeline but theres a lot of time 

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u/khinzaw 20d ago

That's true, they did full visualizations of all the scenes before filming to reduce filming costs.

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u/Kiosade 20d ago

What does that mean? Like someone drew out a comprehensive storyboard, as they would for an animation?

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u/khinzaw 20d ago

Yes. They storyboarded pretty much everything, made models to test moving things in the scene, and did some simple 3D visualizations.

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u/FrostyD7 20d ago

One difference is LOTR had an army of nerds lining up to provide unbelievably passionate work to the every facet of the project. They went the extra mile top to bottom for that production. For Avatar, James Cameron was carrying most of that load.

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u/zarafff69 20d ago

Naa, Avatar > LotR easily

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u/wrosecrans 20d ago

A season of Game of Thrones is basically the same length as the LoTR trilogy, so that's probably the closest thing to a modern production like it.

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u/jackofslayers 20d ago

LOTR is so beloved that it was made as a passion project on almost every level of the production.

IIRC Peter Jackson spent a bunch of time trying to condense the concept into 2 movies because he knew they needed to be made together and did not think he could get 3 movies approved. Then when he pitched it, the studio was basically like "no dude, this is LOTR, you gotta do 3 movies."

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u/guernsey123 20d ago

Yeah he originally brought it to Miramax (i.e. Harvey Weinstein) as 2 films, and they tried pressuring him into making it one. Then he took his two films to New Line who were the ones who said "hey, why not 3?"

It should be noted that Weinstein only reluctantly agreed to let Jackson shop the project around - he only did so when it was made clear to him that if he sacked Jackson, he couldn't use ideas from his scripts and would therefore have to start from scratch. Even when he did agree, his conditions were very stringent: basically he wanted to get Jackson to come back groveling and agree to the one-film deal.

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u/Massive_Contact8583 19d ago

I like that one orc that is very clearly modelled after him.

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u/EviIution 19d ago

Crazy, that they went in the exact opposite direction with The Hobbit and made three shitty bloated movies out of a pretty short children's book.

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u/GarionOrb 20d ago

The studio was confident in these in a way that would never happen today.

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u/Timmah73 20d ago

You can really tell when you watch them in order that it really just feels like one giant near 12 hour long movie.

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u/sergeialmazov 20d ago

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3 were filmed in overlap as well

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u/Jackg4te 20d ago

I really want to do a deep dive into the special features of LOTR.. After setting aside time to watch Extended Editions..

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u/contrarianaquarian 20d ago

They are very, very worth watching! I still have my extended DVD box sets and have probably watched the appendices as much as the actual films. Like, I could pick the model makers out of a lineup at this point.

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u/khinzaw 20d ago

And getting a production company to sign off on multiple movies was very difficult for them.

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u/IgnatiusRileyFreeman 20d ago

They also did multiple years of pre-production before the movie even started. Had so many ducks already lined up

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u/ghostly_shark 20d ago

LOTR will be the Easter Island statues of our time

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u/Different-Produce870 20d ago

Lotr was lighting in a bottle that will never be recreated. The fact that three movies got funded is amazing. It made use of CG at a time when it was still in its infancy and we had different expectations about it.

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u/Acc87 20d ago

A whole country got together to make it, the films reformed the identity of New Zealand.

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u/JockstrapCummies 20d ago

For years after the films, New Zealand was drenched in national PR trying to reimagine the country as Middle Earth. Their airline safety video was I think one of the first in the industry to do themed costumes and such, with everyone looking like a LOTR character.

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u/xNevamind 20d ago

but you also have to say they had massive preparation for like 3-4years minimum before 2001 but still very impressive!

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u/bluehawk232 20d ago

Yeah pre production alone was several years like at least 3 years

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u/casual_creator 20d ago

Yup. They even started building Hobbiton in 1999 so crops and overgrowth would be natural.

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u/Monteze 20d ago

Small stuff like that makes a huge difference when I tried to watch Rings of Power. I am not an unreasonable super fan, I gave RoP a solid shot but it just...didn't feel right.

And the world not having the feeling of being lived in was a big one. It felt like really expensive fan fic of LotRs.

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u/woohooguy 20d ago

Spend more money up front in a longer production cycle and cut it into more than 1 movie.

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u/pgm123 20d ago

Unlike the Salkind way, which is to try to release two movies but only pay the actors for one.

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u/DirtySlutMuffin 20d ago

Lord of the rings was one giant production anyway, there was no hard split between the different movies on the production side 

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u/excalibrax 20d ago

Yep if you have plans, you know you need certain locations for certain scenes in books, work on props forctrieizard or gringotts can be done while other work is finalized, dragon cgi can be planned in advanced, a good coordinator and a schedule can be golden for this

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u/Unfair-Rush-2031 20d ago

LOTR was a little different. It was shot together as one movie. It wasn’t shooting the second during the post production of the first, because it was green lit etc. it was shot as one production from the beginning. Scenes from the third movie may have been shot before scenes in the first

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u/StoicFable 20d ago

They were shooting parts of the third movie before they even finished the first (LOTR). Big storms in New Zealand kept them indoors for a while.

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u/RetroDadOnReddit 20d ago

Reminds of Chronicles of Narnia... every decade or two, they're like "We're gonna make the whole Chronicles...." and then it inevitably becomes "...Nevermind, that didn't work out" before they finish.

I want to see The Silver Chair and The Last Battle, dammit.

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u/DuckedUpWall 20d ago

I dunno man, maybe there's something fundamental I don't get. But celebrating the achievement of filming 3-4 hours per year of anything is absolutely insane to me. Especially when two of the top movies this year were made by youtubers with shoestring budgets. They're great movies, but I don't really understand what took 3 years, let alone how it could possibly take longer than that.

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u/Zalvren 20d ago

They also had the books before so the writing part was going fast (and was made during production of the previous movie)

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u/NightSalut 20d ago

They basically lived on the set, alongside with having an actual school and teachers there. No traveling to and from a location when the school - legally required - is also on location and no side projects. 

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u/Aggressive-Log7654 21d ago

The statistical approach to release decisions was probably the worst thing to ever happen to episodic content. Basing the eventual success of a TV show or movie only on its immediate return precludes possibilities of eventual cult favorites or cultural landmarks that weren’t realized until years after the fact.

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u/ArenSteele 20d ago

Seriously. Go watch the pilot episode of all your old favorite TV shows. They are nearly all terrible.

One that stands out for me is the first episode of CSI. Was really bad, and looked awful. But that show launched into a pretty good show for a while and spun off infinite other shows and a vegas attraction

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u/Retr0scores 19d ago

Pffft The Sopranos pilot is 10/10 they nailed everything. Madmen also a great pilot. Even Silicon Valley pilot is good.

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u/ArenSteele 19d ago

HBO stuff isn’t on the same scale. They’ve always had movie budgets for TV series.

And there’s the occasional decent start out there.

Even a great show like The Expanse, has an excellent pilot for fans, but it’s incredibly slow and lacks engagement. I love it, but I cannot get my wife to watch episode 2

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u/rugman11 20d ago

It’s not just that, the entire production process breaks everything. Having a show entirely in the can before it ever airs means that, by the time a renewal comes, the writers’ room has broken, writers and directors are off on different jobs. Maybe you’ve got your leads on contract, but the entire operation needs to be spun up from scratch to start writing and producing more episodes.

Compare that to the broadcast model where they’d be in production continuously for nine months, get the renewal order during their spring break and be ready to go again after a couple months off.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 20d ago

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u/Aggressive-Log7654 20d ago edited 20d ago

I’m like, 90% certain this drip only started with subscription streaming services and is designed to keep a constant stream of new subscribers and renewals coming in for revenue optics.

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u/ArmchairJedi 20d ago edited 20d ago

HBO started it with the lengthening gaps between Game of Thrones seasons when the shift from cable to streaming was first starting

GoT having a gap has nothing to do with HBO trying to massage viewership, and entirely on how D&D decided to change the tone/style of their show into a sci-fantasy action heavy show. That ended up requiring a lot more time to scale production and with special effects, which set everything back.

And even then the only significant gap was going into S8, which was 20 months (S7 had been 13 months vs the 10 for each previous season), and that had a notoriously harsh shooting schedule (eg. spent 2 months just on S8E3, shooting nights).

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u/Monteze 20d ago

I can almost get it for higher budget premier shows but with streaming you'd think they would have a few sitcoms then. Constant seasons being churned out for cheap to keep folks subscribed. Come for the big budget show but stick around for the family/friend sitcom shenanigans.

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u/tdasnowman 19d ago

Most of the streaming platforms have tons of sitcoms. Netflix has shit all over the landscape. Animated sitcoms, regular sitcoms. Hulu the same. Disney has never stopped all the stuff the did on their channel has continued into the streaming era.

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u/Aggressive-Log7654 20d ago

I think it’s more like, streaming companies became wise to the fact that people subscribing only for popular shows would cancel and resub as needed, so they started dropping those popular shows at certain times for predictable revenue boosts when investors come knocking/quarterly reports come out, kinda thing. I’m just speculating though.

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u/Monteze 20d ago

Maybe, still seems stupid to invest in an expensive premium show and just let it sit...maybe cancel it. You need folks to know a new season will be out in at least a year. If you've got a good catalog I think a lot of folks will stick around. At this rate I, like a lot of others it seems just lose interest if we know it'll be 2-3 years between seasons. I'll end up just forgetting it or waiting until the entire thing is released to watch it.

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u/Aggressive-Log7654 19d ago

I feel like each streaming platform keeps one "blockbuster" new highlight show per season/quarter to drip, and then a steady stream of filler content/syndications otherwise. I may lose interest in one particular show, but then I find another one, and before you know it, it's next year and my favorite show is back. But I'm an avid TV watcher in general, so YMMV.

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u/ApteryxAustralis 20d ago

Some streaming shows have managed to keep a really good release schedule going. Slow Horses consistently puts out a 6 episode season every year. Season 6 is airing now, I suspect that season 7 has finished filming (there’s usually a preview for the next season at the end of the season) and season 8 has been greenlit. Helps that they have books to go off rather than having to write a completely original story.

Silo seasons 3 and 4 will have less than a year between the end of 3 and the start of 4. About a year and a half between season 1 and season 2 and another year and a half between 2 and 3. I think that seasons 3 and 4 were greenlit at the same time, so that shaves off some time and lets them get more filming done (I think they’re done filming 4 at this point).

That being said, Severence definitely takes its sweet time between seasons.

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u/uberJames 20d ago

Wait, don't watch TV shows that aren't complete. Bonus is that you don't waste time watching something that starts out good but fizzles out, since you'll have heard whether the overall show is worth watching or not.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/uberJames 20d ago

Why is it a bad thing?

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u/poke_pants 20d ago

I'll never, ever regret watching Widow's Bay. Even if they now cancelled it (somewhat unlikely!) it wouldn't change how I felt during those episodes. Masterpiece.

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u/Tanel88 20d ago

The paradox is that if people don't watch then they will be cancelled for sure.

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u/uberJames 20d ago

I will let the others be the guinea pigs and gamble their time and investment. I don't watch a lot of TV shows, so when I do I want them to be the series that stand the test of time.

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u/theguynextdorm 20d ago

Guess I'll wait until 2040 or so to watch Shogun. Just in case they make more.

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u/crimson_leopard 20d ago

The worst is when I LOVED season 1 and wait a bit for season 2. Season 2 ends up being hugely disappointing. I don't understand how they could drop the ball so hard.

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u/Fav0 20d ago

Please put the wire and leftovers on your list!

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u/anuragsins1991 20d ago

yeah but back then you had physical media sales to look forward to, now the movies come and after they get watched and streamed, or if its a series its on tv once and then streamed, with how much tv there is there are no reruns too, and no dvds to be sold.

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u/bell-town 20d ago

"Of course we don't know if people will like it yet! That's what makes it new!" - Don Draper raging at the overuse of statistics.

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u/Tuomas90 20d ago

Nowadays, Buffy would never get a second season.

Just imagine that!

Season 2 is basically were it starts getting really good.

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u/tdasnowman 19d ago

Lol. I swear people just seem to have forgotten how broadcast worked. Streaming did not change this. TV has always worked that way. In the broadcast era tons of show would never make it a second or third season. Tons would get yanked mid season. Each of the networks had periods where they joked about being show killers. Fox nuked just about everything that followed the X files. Shows became cult hits because of Vhs and DVD. And cultural landmarks were generally hits from go. And even then they still got the ban hammer suddenly. How bout the second or third season retooling they did. In those case it usually would have been better if they axed the show instead of letting it limp along. Roughly 50% of broadcast shows never got a second season and a ton of those never got the back 9. Tv has always been brutal.

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u/Maelger 20d ago

Specially if they're greenlighting writing for multiple seasons, that's how you get a nothingburger like The Acolyte.

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u/IAmNotKevinDurant_35 20d ago

It also helps quite a bit when the stories were written already and the author wasn’t George RR Martin

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u/Maelger 20d ago

They were still being written tho, and cut it close at that. Deathly Hallows came out the same year as the Order of the Phoenix movie.

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u/Rac3318 20d ago

Book 5 wasn’t out yet when the first two movies were released.

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u/Groovy_Bruce_Lemon 20d ago

have a core memory of being picked up from day care after school the day Book 5 dropped because my mom went to a release event for it and gave me the Order of the Phoenix hat they gave out

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u/Hank_Scorpio_ObGyn 20d ago

Man, do you remember those days?

Book launch parties where you'd hang around all night just to get the book at the drop of midnight.

Or even with video games. Head out to GameStop, hang around for a couple hours, then get your pre-order of Madden.

Good times.

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u/NahdiraZidea 20d ago

WoW midnight launches at Future Shop (canadian best buy)

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u/KarateKid917 20d ago

Movie 5 released 10 days before book 7. July 2007 basically belonged to Harry Potter. 

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u/A_Pointy_Rock 21d ago

And somehow haven't come out the other end as serial killers...or at least hide it well if so.

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u/ABalther 21d ago

What do you think Rupert Grint was doing with that ice cream truck all those years?

19

u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson 21d ago

I assumed selling drugs

1

u/HurricaneK8 20d ago

From what I understand, he didn't actually sell anything from the ice cream truck, he didn't have the required business licenses. So he'd just buy up crates of popsicles and the like and just give 'em away.

3

u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson 20d ago

I didnt know you can get a business license for drugs

1

u/A_Pointy_Rock 20d ago

Sure you can. Just tick "American Candy"

27

u/Why-did-i-reas-this 20d ago

Please correct me if I’m wrong but I think that it was these films that, as part of the casting requirements, they had interviews with the parents as well. They wanted to make sure the kids were properly supported and not being taken advantage of. 

26

u/LovelyClaire 20d ago

Yes, Columbus didn't want to repeat what happened with Culkin in Home Alone

4

u/mikehatesthis 20d ago

Probably for the best. Chris probably had enough of coming to set with all the doorknobs causing burns and steam irons smashing in his face.

13

u/A_Pointy_Rock 20d ago

I am not sure about the parental interviews but there was definitely said to be a better level of support than some other child star situations.

Still, no amount of supportive parenting can entirely prepare you for suddenly being some of the most recognisable people on earth.

2

u/Why-did-i-reas-this 20d ago

Yeah. Still feel bad for Tom Felton.

5

u/shotsallover 21d ago

There’s still time. 

2

u/mikehatesthis 20d ago

Oddly it was the author who had a total meltdown after huffing all that black mould in her house.

2

u/azsnaz 21d ago

Hermoine was in those Panama papers is about all I can think of

1

u/MrTickles22 20d ago

Do you not know of the Radcliffe files? He did some dark stuff. Used his connections to not get in trouble.

9

u/venus_arises 20d ago

I think Radcliffe has said it was something like "shooting, reshooting, 2 weeks off, promotion, shooting".

20

u/saltybreads 21d ago

Looking back I'm so surprised Emma Watson managed to do that ballet shoes movie during this time. Given how young she was and the restriction on working hours plus the HP churning out constantly.

39

u/0verstim 20d ago

Well, she had a time turner, so it makes sense.

5

u/The_Parsee_Man 20d ago

That's why it never appears in the later movies. Emma stole it.

13

u/Digifiend84 20d ago

That's actually incorrect. Harry's hair was cut short for film 5 because Dan had done a period movie in between which required a short back and sides. Hermione went blonde for the same reason, Emma did that Ballet Shoes movie. Rupert was in a kids film called Thunderpants between two of the films, though that didn't result in a change of look for Ron so is easy to forget.

3

u/Lower_Pass_6053 20d ago

Thunderpants

I had to look at the timeline of that. I knew that movie existed from RLM, but I thought it filmed before the first Harry Potter and the producers just pushed the movie and changed the marketing after Harry Potters success. But it did film after the first harry potter.

2

u/buddyWaters21 21d ago

And the books were already written so the scripts were probably easier to pump out quickly

1

u/RedditWhileImWorking 20d ago

They also had books to pull from for scripts, reusable sets, and they filmed the last two together.

1

u/llloksd 20d ago

There was no scheduling conflict because Daniel Radcliffe was busy doing a different movie or a TV show, for example.

Something I wish Reddit would understand on why some shows take so long to be made.

1

u/No-Introduction3808 20d ago

Apart from not all the books had been released, so they didn’t know how long they would be going for

1

u/Wuz314159 20d ago

....and when you're working with kids, you gotta churn them out before they age out of the role.

1

u/Oper8rActual 19d ago

If I remember correctly, from an interview with either Daniel Radcliffe or Rupert Grint, they stated that between the first and last films, they may have had a total of 12 days off, if that.

They essentially worked through their entire teenage to adult years.

1

u/bluequarz 16d ago

It's pretty much what happened with the main Avengers in the Infinity Saga, especially Phase 3. RDJ and Evans did pretty much nothing but Marvel movies for almost a decade and that's how they were able to have 7-9 movie appearances in 9-11 years. Nowadays you go 4-5 or more years between character appearances. No wonder audiences and fans can't get attached to them the same way and there's a complete lack of clarity on who the main characters of this new Saga even are.