Inside Chris's Head » harry potter

Disney Muggles Missed Out on "Harry Potter"

chris2x — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 15:30:12 +0000

Mousetrips has an interesting story about what might have been in Disney-land.

This has been one of those urban legends that has been circulating around the Web for years now. About how some unnamed executive on the publishing side of The Walt Disney Company had had the chance to acquire the rights to J.K. Rowling’s first novel, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” … Only to reject the manuscript because this person thought that the book was too odd or too English.

With the upcoming release of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”, The Walt Disney Company finally has its arms firmly wrapped around a major piece of classic children’s literature. From all early indications, once this Andrew Adamson film is released to theaters on December 9th, the house that Eisner built will finally have something that Michael has been lusting after for 20+ years now: A successful film franchise that’s based on a piece of popular fiction.

This is something that Disney almost had with “The Lord of the Rings.” Only to get cold feet once Peter Jackson and the Weinsteins made Disney’s CEO aware of how much this two part epic was supposed to cost. (Yes, you heard right. Back when Miramax was trying to get a movie version of Tolkien’s epic fantasy made, the Mouse just couldn’t bring itself to pay for production of a trilogy. Which is why Disney execs insisted that Jackson cram all of the action of “The Fellowship of the Rings, “The Two Towers” and “The Return of the King” into two pictures. It was only after Peter took “LOTR” over New Line Cinema that this ambitious film project was allowed to become a trilogy again, with TONS of extra DVD footage. And the rest of the story … You know … ) And as for “Harry Potter” …

What most people don’t know is that not only did the Walt Disney Company miss out on securing the movie rights to the “Harry Potter” book series, but — thanks to an oversight by a recently departed Disney Publishing senior editorial executive — the Mouse House actually missed out on the chance to publish the “Harry Potter” books in the United States and Canada.

Prior to Scholastic agreeing to publish J.K. Rowling’s first novel in the United States and Canada, the Bloomsbury version of the book allegedly came across Ms. Holton’s [Lisa Holton] desk. Which meant that Disney had the opportunity to lock up the North American publishing rights before Scholastic did, for “Philosopher’s Stone” as well as all of the “Harry Potter” books that followed. But this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity vanished into thin air like a puff of smoke when Lisa rejected the book.

Amazon Dream and Nightmare – Harry Potter

chris2x — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 23:20:05 +0000

Imagine you are the leading on-line distributor of books and that there is a widely popular book set to launch this week. You want to make sure people get their copy promptly… but not early, and you are shipping enough to fill a 200,000 square foot warehouse. Oh yes, and you don’t want the contents of the book to slip out early. Got it? That’s the kind of week amazon is having. From CNN :

Amazon.com has a 200,000-square-foot high-security warehouse where the “Harry Potter” books are kept before being sent out. Staff are “carefully hand-picked,” according to an Amazon spokeswoman, and the company is legally bound by an agreement with publisher Bloomsbury to keep many of the details surrounding the release a closely guarded secret.

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chris2x — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 16:24:42 +0000

I love the feature of Amazon where it recommends books that i might be interested in based on what I have ordered before but I had to laugh out loud when I got this email:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has purchased books by J. K. Rowling, you might like to know that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Ancient Greek Edition) will be released soon. You can pre-order your copy at a savings of 30% by following the link below.

No thanks, I will wait for Sanskrit.