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| Exciting and colorful, classic adventure-style poster for Chris Columbus' Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone |
The bespectacled Harry Potter is saved from his existence as the black sheep in a foster family in the 'muggler' world and enrolls in the wizard school Hogwarts, where the Sorcerer's Stone has been stolen!
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is written by Steve Kloves (The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)), adapting J.K. Rowling's (The Casual Vacancy (2012)) same-titled 1997 novel, and directed by great Pennsylvanian filmmaker Chris Columbus (Adventures in Babysitting (1987)).
The fresh-faced child cast are sweet, (though Emma Watson's (My Week with Marilyn (2011)) supercilious Hermione is a bit annoying) in this the first film in the Potter franchise, which spans 7 sequels, as the last entry in Rowling's book series was broken into two films. They are backed up by a handsome British adult cast of which especially Robbie Coltrane's (Midnight Breaks (1990)) Hagrid is a pleasure here.
The film has very good effects, but the running time is excessive, especially for grown up audiences who would expect some kind of thematic counterweight to justify this, which the Potter films rarely inhabit.
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Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 125 mil. $
Box office: 1,075.1 mil. $
= Mega-hit (returned 8.60 times the cost)
[Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone premiered 4 November (London) and runs 152 minutes. Warner Bros. bought the rights to the first 4 Potter novels for 1 mil. £. Steven Spielberg was one in a line of directors in talks to head the film, but he turned down the offer, calling it "no challenge." Rowling preferred Terry Gilliam, but Columbus was hired, and Rowling had great power over several other aspects of the film and franchise, from casting to lines, plot and more. English child labor laws were altered to accommodate the production to shoot in the UK. Shooting took place from September 2000 - March 2001 in the UK, including London and Scotland. Coca Cola reportedly paid 150 mil. $ for marketing affiliation with the first two Potter films and optioning on the 3rd. The film opened #1 to a 90.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, breaking opening day and opening weekend records: It held the #1 for another 4 weekends and stayed in the top 5 for another 4 weeks (#2-#4-#5-#5), grossing 317.5 mil. $ (32.6 % of the total gross) in the original 974.7 mil. $ release, selling more than 55 mil. tickets in the US alone. The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 152.9 mil. $ (15.7 %) and the UK with 84.6 mil. $ (8.7 %). It was the highest-grossing film of the year and the 2nd highest-grossing of all time at the time of its release, behind Titanic (1997). It has had several re-releases since, boosting its gross total with another 100 mil. $, mostly from the UK. The film was nominated for 3 Oscars, winning none: It lost Best Art-Set Direction and Costume Design to Moulin Rouge! and Score (John Williams) to Howard Shore for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. It was also nominated for 8 BAFTAs, won an AFI award and was nominated for another and was nominated for a Grammy. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to 2 notches higher than this one. Columbus returned with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), the next in the franchise. Daniel Radcliffe (Jungle (2017)) first returned as Potter in the same film. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is certified fresh at 81 % with a 7.07/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone?
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