Harry Potter is set to work his magic
again. As the final two films of JK Rowling's series approach completion, a new
"Hogwarts experience" is to open in the studios where they are made. The visitor
attraction will include recreations of some of the boy wizard's haunts,
including the Hogwarts school hall and Albus Dumbledore's study.
The
plans, part of an expansion of Leavesden, the Warner Bros studio in
Hertfordshire, are Britain's answer to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a
20-acre attraction at the Universal resort in Orlando, Florida, due to open this
Friday.
The American project infuriated Boris Johnson, the mayor of
London, who believes Britain has lost out on the chance to capitalise on one of
its most valuable cultural exports. "We must be utterly mad as a country to
leave it to the Americans to make money from a great British invention," Johnson
wrote earlier this month. "I appeal to the children of this country and their
Potter-fiend parents to write to Warner Bros and Universal and, perhaps, even to
the great JK herself. Bring Harry home to Britain."
On Monday, many
of the actors from the Potter films, including Daniel Radcliffe, who plays
Harry, and Michael Gambon, who is the headmaster Dumbledore, will fly to Florida
for the opening of the new attraction, part of Universal's existing Islands of
Adventure theme park. It will include a steam-belching Hogwarts Express, the
village of Hogsmeade and, towering over them all, a reproduction of Hogwarts
itself.
Although the Leavesden site will not be as large and will
consciously not be a theme park, it will provide fans with the real costumes and
sets used in the films. There will be replicas of characters, as well as
clothes worn by Hermione Granger, Voldemort and the Weasley family.
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