It had to happen sometime, and that time is now : our Harry Potter blitz is officially (and, for those of us who are non-fans, finally) over. Here's a look at all we cranked out:

Review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Seven potential Harry Potter franchise killers
Seven Harry Potter rumors that officially are untrue
Seven Reasons Harry Potter is overrated
Seven Harry Potter spin-off possibilities
Seven Brits left to cast in Harry Potter
Defending Harry Potter - not that he needs it, really.
One final reason why Harry Potter is overrated
The Cinematical Podcast: Harry Potter Edition
Harry Potter: Braving the 12:01 showing
Steven Kloves back on board for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter beats crap out of Johnny Cash: Weekend Box Office
Wall Street Journal on challenges facing Harry Potter
Caption This: Harry Potter edition
Caption this winner revealed
Japanese Harry Potter paper art
Harry Potter breaks online ticketing records
Daniel Radcliffe branches out from Harry Potter
Harry Potter special edition: Tracking the HSX

 

Congratulations to Evan, the winner of this week's caption contest and the lucky recipient of the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire soundtrack. If you are Evan, please contact us with your address so's we can get you your prize. Thanks to all *70* of you who entered, and check back this time tomorrow - we're launching a huge new contest with massive prizes.

The Harry Potter movies are slowly but surely depleting a vital resource from the film industry: venerable British actors and actresses. Look at the number of renowed actors from the UK portraying characters in the series: Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Miranda Richardson, John Hurt, John Cleese, Julie Walters, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Gary Oldman, Dawn French, Julie Christie ... the list is impressive and seemingly unending. Imelda Staunton has just been cast as Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Stephen Fry hasn't appeared in the movies yet, but he's been voicing the narrator in the video games.

I am worried that before the series is finished, the Harry Potter casting directors will have to recruit amateurs or, perish the thought, Americans. Can you imagine Renee Zellweger or Uma Thurman trying to mimic a British accent? Perish the thought.

After the jump, I've listed the top seven remaining well-known British charactor actors that I suspect may be sucked into future Harry Potter films, along with the possible roles they might play.

As James Rocchi mentioned last week in his post on the troubles facing the Harry Potter movie franchise, screenwriter Steven Kloves, who scripted the first four Harry Potter films, is not writing the screenplay for the next film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. That film is being scripted by Michael Goldenberg, a Sundance Institute alum and playwright who cowrote the most excellent script for 2003's vastly underrated Peter Pan.  Kloves is back on board, however, for the sixth film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and, according to IMDB, is expected to start work on that script soon.

I'm curious to see how a different writer adapting the source material will affect the feel of the fifth movie, and then how they'll bring it back to Kloves feel for the sixth. Goldenberg already showcased his talent for working with fantasy with a dark edge in Peter Pan, so I'm sure he'll do well with Harry. Besides, J.K Rowling maintains tight control over the films, and I can't imagine she'd let anyone stray too far from the tone of her books.

The post to follow can be summed up in one sentence: "Holy crap - that Harry Potter movie made over a hundred mil this weekend."

With only the mildest Thursday-night-at-midnight head start, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire blew away the box office competition this weekend, earning $101.4 million - roughly 4.5 times the gross of the number two film, James Mangold's Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line. Its $22.4 million isn't exactly a disappointment – that's the kind of number that most frame-topping films have been raking in for the past few months – but the whole add-up certaily makes you wonder where that $100 million worth of ticket buyers are when there are no teen wizars flicks in the cinemas. Elsewhere in the top ten: the 50 Cent movie is dieing, Pride and Prejudice is thriving, and big stars like Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal and Catherin Zeta-Jones are watching their films tank.  Jump with us for the exact numbers.

 

You know you want that Goblet of Fire soundtrack we're giving away ... so what are you waiting for? Head on over here and enter our latest caption contest. You have until 2pm EST this afternoon.

On Thursday evening, my local AMC Theatre was having a big showing for the premiere of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, with seven of the 16 screens showing the film. Before I even purchased my tickets - about three hours before the showtime - two of the screens already registered sellouts online, but I was still a bit skeptical. As we know, it's still a Thursday night, most schools in the area don't have Friday off for any holiday or teacher conference, and something that gets out in the area of 3 a.m. is going to turn away some people. Boy, was I wrong.

The particular showing I was in was probably about 75% full, but I think four of the shows ended up registered as "sellouts" for the theatre. The mix of people varied in ages. I didn't see as many adults/parents as I would have expected, but there were quite a few people from the local university, and a ton of junior high and high school-aged kids there, and not just from our town. The dress-up was in full effect, even for the older people there. I saw a lot more prop glasses than at previous premieres for this series, and the scarves were everywhere - probably because of the 30 degree temperature drop in the 24-hour period before this film hit the scene.

As many Harry Potter fans have heard, the next book released in the series is reported to be the last. Harry and friends will wrap up what they've set out to do, and that'll be how things will end. Or is it? Is it possible that the series could thrive on in another form, perhaps as a spin-off of some kind?

Here are my picks, in order, of the most likely scenario for spinning off the Harry Potter franchise:

One of the best lines in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is brief, but it does a lot to explain why these films are as good as they are – which, by the standards of kid’s entertainment, is very good indeed. Long-standing friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and title star Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) are feuding, and Ron has asked third-party Hermione (Emma Watson) to convey some information to Harry, even though Ron and Harry are standing about 20 feet apart. Hermione explains how someone told Ron that Hogwarts gamekeeper Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) wants to see Harry, and Harry snaps back how Hermione can tell Ron that … and Hermione explodes with tears, crying out her frustration at how foolish her dear friends are being and the hurt it’s causing: “I’m not an owl!”  

If you’ve read or seen any of Harry’s earlier sagas, the line doesn’t just make sense (in Harry’s world, letters between wizards are delivered by enchanted owls); it actually moves you. It’s a brief exchange that speaks to the carefully-crafted mythology and world screenwriter Steve Kloves has managed to flesh out even while paring down J.K. Rowling’s increasingly-large books. It also shows how well the actors who’ve been with the series from the start are able to sell a piece of dialogue that mixes real feelings with this world of fantastic wizardry. The Potter saga works so well because it manages to mix the fantastic and the real, combining natural teen social anxiety with supernatural mortal peril, mixing the hurts of adolescence with the wounds left by curses and claws. Directed by Mike Newell, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire may not be anything new, nor is it as distinctive as Alfonso Curarón’s take on the third book, Prisoner of Azkaban, but it’s a remarkable piece of teen entertainment that has scares, laughs, fantastic visions and a real heart.

A couple of days ago, James Rocchi detailed the seven biggest challenges facing the Harry Potter franchise. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal chimed in with a couple more. Being the Dow Jones-lapdogs that they are, WSJ reporter Kate Kelly points out the obvious – it's all about money – but the fiscal problems are all wrapped up in the bigger problem of demographics.

There's no denying that the franchise has milked huge pools of money for Warner Brothers. That's great, but each picture has made slightly less money than the last, whilst costing slightly more to produce. Research shows that the youngest demographic has already abandoned the franchise, and Goblet, with its rumored darkness, should only continue that trend. The Potter pics thus have to gain older viewers as they lose the kids. Warners marketing drone Dawn Taubin isn't worried about making that happen. "Each book is a year later; everybody in the book is a year older," she says. "And so I think that the audience ends up trending a little bit older as well."

But how are we defining "older"? Are they talking about losing 3 year olds and gaining twenty-somethings? Does that even seen possible? In my highly scientific research, I've come to the conclusion that there's sort of a wide demographic, from about college-age to young-parent age, that pretty much missed the boat on all this Harry hullabaloo. At 25, I've *never* cared about these movies or book, and there's not a wizard love triangle that's going to change that – at the same time, I know people well into their 50s who can't get enough of this stuff. How do the filmmakers (as James pointed out, they seem to change with every film) tackle the age problem, without bleeding the fans they already have?