Thursday, August 2, 2001

More news about the filming of 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets'



[Version française]





The Movies.com reports the following today:

We can confirm from reliable sources that on July 30 Lee Tamahori signed with Bond producers EON to direct the 20th movie in the Bond franchise. As yet untitled, pre-production will start in August for an early 2002 shoot on the Pinewood 007 stage. This also puts a spike in the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise which had hoped to move into the 007 stage (plus 12 other sound stages) from October to shoot HP 2/3.
Although this news confirms Warner Bros. initial plans to move to Pinewood, it now seems likely that HP2/3 has been trumped by Bond. Thanks to Tom!
‘The Insider’ sent us very interesting details from Leavesden Studios, telling us that if a move to Pinewood is still in the cards (which he doubts), Warner Bros. has kept it very quiet.
“Filming on CoS will start at the beginning of November (could change – who knows?). No dates have been set for filming the third. As for the Pinewood rumours, many of the Potter sets are still in place at Leavesden, including an entire close of houses for Privet drive scenes. This was only completed at the end of filming of PS/SS – And yes, I know some was originally shot on location. Staying at Leavesden has big cost savings if sets and workshops do not have to be relocated. Still, it is possible that Pinewood may have something up their sleeve, as post production is much easier there. Leavesden is actually a bit of a dump, a disused factory with a leaky roof and crumbling offices. However, it is big and it must be cheaper than Pinewood.”
“Certainly production show no signs of moving from Leavesden. Warners are already committed to 3 films (and at present no more), and they would ideally want to leave the sets in place. In the main, the sets cannot simply be taken down and stored. If you had seen the stage used for the dark forest scenes you would know what I am talking about. Hence the 12 months would cover them up to the start of the next film. It is a sort of storage contract in that sense. If they really are planning to uproot (literally in the case of the forest) all the sets from Leavesden, they are keeping it bloody quiet.”
‘The Insider’ also doubts the rumored plans of a back-to-back shooting of HP2 and HP3, and he gives us very good arguments for this (“I KNOW that the children’s parents did not want this”):
“The main reason that they won’t be back to back is that the parents of Dan, Rupert and Emma did not want the kids subjected to that sort of workload. Filming was very hard on all of them (try working a 12-hour day for six months at the age of 10/12) and any suggestion that this could be maintained over a 12 month period are idiotic. Additionally, the parents were keen to allow the kids to return to proper schooling in the meantime. A decision on this topic was delayed because none of the 3 leads actually signed contracts until near the end of filming – incredible as this may seem. The timing of filming on Chamber of secrets was a major hurdle in these negotiations. Admittedly, the fact that Rupert then decided to do Thunderpants in the down-time has annoyed Warners, but they had no choice.”
“Don’t make too much of the kids ages meaning a back-to-back shoot. They’ve only had a few months off, with Dan back in June to do flying scenes. I would expect a similar gap for the next one. Filming will start at a similar time of year to the first one (if a little later) and pre- and post-production should be quicker.”
“There is no reason why Warners cannot take the summer off again after filming on HP2, and still come back in time to do the third for release a year later. Indeed, it gives the director/producers/production team the chance to be involved in the post production process. If Warners were to go back-to-back with 2 and 3 they could not release CoS next year – too many people would be tied up with filming the 3rd to finish the 2nd – the entire production team for one, as well as artistes needed for ADR, publicity etc.”

Source: The Leaky Cauldron




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