Warner Bros.has announced its plans to release Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the highly anticipated fifth film from J.K. Rowling’s epic fantasy saga, simultaneously in theaters and on Imax screens nationwide July 13, next year.
The studio followed a similar strategy for the last two entries in the billion-dollar franchise, last November’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and 2004’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkabhan.
The last instalment, ... Goblet of Fire, broke the record for Imax ticket sales, raking in more than $20 million.No word yet whether Harry’s latest supersize adventure will be digitally converted to Imax 3-D, as Warner Bros. is doing for several of this summer’s would-be blockbusters, including Superman Returns and the animated Ant Bully, and as Sony Pictures Animation has agreed to do with its computer-animated debut, Open Season, out in September.
Phoenix, directed by acclaimed David Yates, finds our bespectacled orphan hero facing off the dastardly bureaucrat Dolores Umbridge (Vera Drake’s Imelda Staunton), who, at the behest of corrupt officials at the Ministry of Magic, schemes to take over Hogwarts and oust Professor Dumbledore, enabling the return to power of You Know Who.
Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint once again return as Harry, Hermione and Ron, respectively, backed by an all-star cast that includes Ralph Fiennes back as the evil Lord Voldemort.Warner Bros. has already begun development on the sixth film adaptation in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
As for the seventh and final instalment in Harry’s increasingly dark odyssey, Britain’s most famous (and wealthiest) author has confirmed that she’s well into writing the story to go along with the final chapter, which she wrote years ago that’s been locked away in a vault until she arrived at the last stage of the tale.”The final chapter is hidden away, although it’s now changed very slightly,” Rowling told pressmen last recently.
She also dropped a massive bombshell.”One character got a reprieve, but I have to say two die that I didn’t intend them to die,” she added.Rowling refused to say who, even when prodded whether it would be Harry himself.”I’ve never been tempted to kill him off before the end of book seven, because I always planned seven books and that’s where I want to go,” she said.
According to U.K. publisher Bloomsbury, the currently untitled book won’t hit bookstores until 2007 at the earliest. Our guess is it will be on shelves just in time for a certain movie opening.