2008

Happy New Year!!!

Here’s a look back at 2008 in Harry Potter news! (Thanks, Mugglenet.com)

2/10: Jim Dale wins a Grammy for his recitation of Deathly Hallows.

3/12: Deathly Hallows announced to be 2 films!

3/21: “Mysterious Ticking Noise” wins Best Comedy Video of 2007 on Youtube Awards.

4/14-4/16: Van der and Rowling fight in a 3-day copyrights trial.

4/25: Deathly Hallows Part 1 to come out 11/19/10.

4/25: WB announces a Harry Potter exhibition.

5/1: The first time in a decade, the NY Time Bestseller List doesn’t hold a single Harry Potter book.

5/20: Cover art from Mary Grandpre for 10th-anniversary edition Sorcerer’s Stone is revealed.

5/28: Jo wrote a prequel!

6/10: Prequel sold for 25,000 pounds!

7/18: The Worst Harry Potter Trailer Ever (the 6-second Half-Blood Prince audio one) premieres with The Dark Knight.

7/29:…But a teaser trailer for Half-Blood Prince with The Mummy premieres. And it’s better.

7/31: Happy 28th  Birthday Harry!! and Jo! They gave us a present of publishing The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

8/14: Half-Blood Prince is DELAYED to 7/19/09!!!!!

8/19: WB’s president Alan Horn issues a very un-satisfying statement about the delay.

9/8: RDR Books cannot publish a Harry Potter encyclopedia.

9/9: The Half-Blood Prince game is also delayed.

10/26: An international teaser trailer for Half-Blood Prince leaks online.

11/11: Emma Thompson announces that she will not return as Professor Trelawney in Deathly Hallows.

11/14: Surprise!! New trailer!! It was attached with the Twilight movie, which ironically took the date that Half-Blood Prince was supposed to come out on.

12/4: The Tales of Beedle the Bard is released. 8 million copies were printed.

12/9: The Tales of Beedle the Bard became the fastest selling book of 2008. 2.6 million were sold in the first week.

12/11: The Harry Potter Exhibition will open in Chicago on 4/30/09.

J.K. Rowling Suite

DIRECTLY QUOTED FROM

THE FABULOUS LEAKY CAULDRON:

“The room in Edinburgh’s picturesque Balmoral Hotel where J.K. Rowling finished writing Harry Potter has been renamed, with the author’s permission, the J.K. Rowling Suite, the Telegraph reports. It costs £965/night to stay there.The suite is room number 552 in the hotel, and reps for the Balmoral say that since it was revealed on ITV’s JK Rowling: A Year in the Life documentary last December, “wealthy fans from across the world have stayed there, specifically requesting the suite.” A hotel source told the Telegraph that the 180-square-foot room is exactly the same as when JKR wrote there, including the writing desk she used “as well as the queen-size bed in which she slept.” (However, TLC can report she used the room mostly as a day office, and went home at night; she didn’t spend the whole time there, and likely didn’t spend the night in the bed at all.)The hotel also has on display in the room is the marble bust of Hermes on which JKR wrote, “JK Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (552) on 11th jan 2007.” You can see a picture of the signature here in our galleries. The bust was originally removed from the room, but has now been replaced and sits in a glass case.

The room also now boasts a brass plaque on the front door and a brass owl instead of a door knocker.“