Robin Williams has indicated that he wanted to appear in Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer’s Stone but was turned down. In an interview with
today’s (Wednesday) New York Post, Williams said, “There were a
couple of parts I would have loved to play but there was a ban on
American actors.” He suggested that he may apply for one of the sequels:
“Maybe, one day … say if [Harry] goes to Yale and becomes president,”
he said.
In an effort to satisfy the frenetic demand by youngsters to see
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone during its opening weekend,
Warner Bros. is attempting to clear an unprecedented number of screens
for the debut, Daily Variety reported today. The
current record for a new movie is held by Mission: Impossible 2 ,
which bowed in 3,653 theaters. But the trade paper observed that
Potter is likely to be run on at least 7,000 screens due to
multi-screen bookings at multiplexes, meaning that the movie will be
playing on one out of every six screens in North America.
The Ottawa Citizen
has become the first major North American newspaper to publish a
full-fledged review of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
(or…Philosopher’s Stone, as it is titled in Canada),
thereby challenging the studios’ embargo on reviews being published
before a film’s release date. In a review printed in the newspaper on
Monday, but omitted from its website, critic Jay Stone wrote that the
film presents “a large scope and beautifully rendered setpieces, but
with something constricted, almost claustrophobic, about it.” Stone’s
conclusion: It is “a fine movie, but it never becomes the pure gold of
the classics.”
