'Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling Reveals on Pottermore She Wishes A Certain Main Character Didn't Die, Found Out Who
The Pottermore website put together by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has been receiving high traffic this month as she has been writing new stories leading up to Christmas. She revealed some interesting insight about one character that she actually regrets killing, Florean, the Diagon Alley ice cream parlor owner. Florean shows up in her book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
"I originally planned Florean to be the conduit for clues that I needed to give Harry during his quest for the Hallows, which is why I established an acquaintance fairly early on," the author said on her Pottermore website. "The problem was that when I came to write the key parts of Deathly Hallows I decided that Phineas Nigellus Black was a much more satisfactory means of conveying clues."
"I seemed to have him kidnapped and killed for no good reason. He is not the first wizard whom Voldemort murdered because he knew too much (or too little), but he is the only one I feel guilty about, because it was all my fault," she added.
Rowling announced a few weeks back through a member newsletter that she would be doing her own 12 days of Christmas for her fans. She is releasing 12 new stories telling about Potter and more on the wizarding world leading up to Christmas day. The new stories began on Dec. 12 at 8:00 am ET, and will include "moments from Half-Blood Prince, shiny gold Galleons and even a new potion or two."
In other Rowling news, she is set to write her first screenplay for the upcoming movie Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them. The new Harry Potter series spinoff movies will be released as a trilogy with films releasing in 2016, 2018, 2020, with the potential for more.
"Jo has a vision for this extension of the franchise, and for the first time, she is writing the script for what she believes is at least a trilogy," Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara told Time Warner's investors conference (via the Los Angeles Times).
The story of Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them is about a character named Newt Scamander, who was a Hufflepuff hero that studied magical creatures and wrote a fictional textbook that bears the franchise's name.
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter have won multiple awards and sold more than 400 million copies.They have become the best-selling book series in history. Rowling had overall approval on the scripts for the Harry Potter movies and maintained creative control by serving as a producer on the final installment.
The 2008 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £560 million, ranking her as the twelfth richest woman in the United Kingdom. Forbes ranked Rowling as the forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of 2007, and Time magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans. In October 2010, Rowling was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors.