Tuesday, December 1, 2009

First look: Harry Potter enters real world in 'Deathly Hallows'

In the next Harry Potter film, most of the action takes place outside the hallowed halls of Hogwarts Castle.

The seventh, and last, book in J.K. Rowling's series about the boy wizard –Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows– is being broken into two films, the first part coming out next November, the second part in 2011.




Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) have disrobed in favor of a casual look for a jaunt in London, here near Piccadilly Circus. Deathly Hallows is the first of the final two Potter films.


The first installment finds young wizards Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) struggling to find their way in the Muggle (human) world, with their own lives in the balance and the fate of the magical realm in their hands.

"They're paranoid," says Grint. "It's quite a scary world because the Snatchers and Death Eaters are running around everywhere. Harry, Ron and Hermione are just camping out in random places, living rough, in regular clothes." Snatchers and Death Eaters are minions of the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes).

Grint adds, grinning: "Me and Dan actually have some stubble." His facial hair served as a kind of invisibility cloak for the lanky, redheaded Grint, who went unrecognized by fans recently while on location in the Welsh countryside. Dubbed a "road movie" by producer David Heyman, Hallows was envisioned by director David Yates as more grounded in reality than the previous Potter movies.

"It's going to feel very real," Yates says. "We're going for a vérité approach. Being away from Hogwarts, they're like these three refugees on the run. They're out in the big bad world, facing real danger, unguarded by those wonderful benign wizards at Hogwarts. They don't have a home to go to.

"We're kind of pulling away from the magic a bit and bringing more reality to it," he says.

Courtesy: Claudia Puig