Video – J.K. Rowling Announces “Pottermore” – The Wait is Over!

J.K. Rowling - Pottermore

The long wait is over.

Today we are learning the secrets of Pottermore.

J.K. Rowling has finally taken the cover off her long awaited website and is leaking the secrets of her new Harry Potter world interactive web site - Pottermore.

Rowling tells us that Pottermore consists of the same great stories we are all familiar with but with one new addition – you the reader.

The new site will immerse the user with existing Harry Potter stories but will allow the user to interact within the story similar to an online role playing computer game with its own social network similar to Facebook.

One journalist who attended to U.K. unveiling said,

“Pottermore will let the user dive into the world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Some areas let users shop for wands in Diagon Alley, travel to Hogwarts from the imaginary Platform 9 3/4 at London's King's Cross train station and be sorted into Hogwarts school houses by the perceptive Sorting Hat. Along the way are wand fights, games and new information about characters beloved around the world, including Harry's reviled relatives, the Dursleys.”

The site will go live on July 31, when 1 million registered users will be chosen to help beta test the new online world. It will be open to all users starting in October in various languages.

One sleuth tells us,

“It’s kind of like an online computer game based around the Harry Potter books but will allow you to interact with the characters and others in your social media circle. Points and awards will be given for solving mysteries and finding hidden secrets within the stories that can be cashed in for real world stuff.”

Users who collect points, levels, rewards, and other gifts can redeem them at various places on the site, around the web, or at your neighborhood mall.

In addition to letting Pottermore tickle your imagination, it will let you build on the digital stories that we are all familiar with.

Users will also be able to download digit eBooks containing all seven Potter stories as well as new Harry Potter material.



And Rowling has promised to share secrets with us on the site about Harry Potter that she has kept hidden for ten years.

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Bad Day for Harry Potter Cast Mates Rupert Grint and Emma Watson – Is That a Bong?

It’s been an exciting week for Harry Potter cast mates Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.

But with some amazing wizardry by the expert public relations of the dark arts staff – even the ugliest of things can again be made beautiful.

Yesterday, an internet photo appeared that supposedly shows Harry Potter’s Ron Weasley hitting a bong.

We suspected it was a fake – but a good fake.


It is indeed a fake. Grint’s publicist responded by saying,

"This is categorically NOT Rupert Grint - It is an impersonator, a lookalike."

Grint’s people are also upset with Perez Hilton for first showing the picture and suggesting it was Rupert.

And fellow Potter cast mate Emma Watson also had her share of bad press when reports surfaced that she had been taunted and bullied into leaving Brown University.

Rumors swirled of fellow students saying things like “Three points for Gryffindor” when she answered a question, or crying out “Oh Harry!” when she walked into a room.

Reports were that Watson had started to fear for her personal safety and decided to change colleges.

Not True. Apparently the change of venue had been planned for quite some time and her rep says,

"Emma has enjoyed her time at Brown tremendously and made many friends there who she keeps in constant contact with. She has now decided to change universities, but not for the bullying, as that is just completely untrue.

She has just decided to continue with a different course. But, for reasons of security I am not prepared to divulge which university she will be attending."

Okay, so everything is settled and peace has once again been restored to the Muggle world. We can move on.

But did you hear about Daniel Radcliffe getting naked with a horse in some Broadway show?

Harry Potter Wants To Play A Drag Queen?

Harry Potter personality Daniel Radcliffe wants to expand his acting range in the movies - by portraying a drag queen.

Radcliffe, 19, said in an interview with Details magazine that he wanted to play a cross-dressing drag queen, just so he could wear woman's clothes and lots of make up.

But Radcliffe did admit it 'would freak some people out', and that a cross-dressing Harry Potter may not be a good role model for his millions of young Hogwarts fans.

He has already caused a stir with his role in "Equus", with scenes of the young actor totally nude.

Radcliffe, who has spent most of his Hollywood career playing Harry Potter, is soon to start a run of Equus on Broadway in New York. The actor will be seen in eight shows a week, with full frontal nudity, just as he did in the hit London production.

But Radcliffe can't shake the "Harry Potter" image for good just yet.

In fact, there are three Harry Potter movies already completed or in production, starting with "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", due next July. The film finds Harry Potter as he begins his 6th year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he discovers an old book marked mysteriously "This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince" and begins to learn more about Lord Voldemort's dark past.

Then comes the two part "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", where author J.K. Rowling wraps up the Potter franchise where Harry continues his search for the horcruxes, but is sidetracked by the mysterious Deathly Hallows as the final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort draws closer. Rowling's has said that poor Harry dies in the final scenes bringing an end to the young wizard and his movies.

But Radcliffe is already trying to break free from the Harry Potter mold so the world can see him as someone other than Harry Potter.

"Equus" is part of that strategy, and so is "Journey" due in 2009, where Radcliffe stars as Dan Eldon, a British born photographer, who spent his childhood in Kenya. His photographs of refugees from the Somalian civil war led to his employment by Reuters, who sent him to Somalia in 1992. His pictures helped draw the world's attention to the crisis, but on 12 July 1993, while covering the story that UN forces had accidentally killed 74 civilians, he and three colleagues were stoned and beaten to death by a furious crowd.

Playing a drag queen may go a bit too far, as Radcliffe seems well on track to shake his child actor Harry Potter persona and break into a new era of adult movie roles.

Watch Daniel Radcliffe In "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" Movie Trailer


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