Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Flies into Theaters

By giraffe 756

We aren’t sure what you’re up to this weekend but we’ll be heading to a theater near us for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I. Like many people who are too old to be reading children’s books, we’ve been fans of the sorcerer's series for a long time. Unlike most we have some personal experience with the muggles and wizards of J.K. Rowlings mega-hit series.

We distinctly remember the day back in 1997 when a Production Executive we worked with at Warner Bros. passed along a book over a lunch meeting and said, “You’ve got to read this. We’re making it into a movie.” This was long before the frenzy. No one we knew had even heard of the little boy who lived in a cupboard under the stairs at 1 Privet Drive. And no one knew what a wild ride was about to start for everyone involved.

What followed was a seven-year period largely submerged in all things Potter and, although it was a stressful gig, it was truly magical. What girl wouldn’t want to stand in Diagon Alley or walk the halls of Hogwarts? We dove deep into the Potter lore and could easily tell you the difference between the Expecto Patronum and Expelliramus spells. We’d giggle if you didn’t know the difference between a goblin and a house elf. And after working on a whole lot of Steven Segal movies, it was nice to know that these would be beloved films, watched for generations to come.

Our Harry days came to an end as The Prisoner of Azkaban was going into pre-production. But we stuck with the books and saw each film. And when we finished the last page of book seven, we felt a major chapter in our own lives come to an end.

So here we are on the threshold of the first of the final two movies. And with the distance of another six years between us and the boy who lived, we can look back with sheer nostalgia. No longer worried about whether or not a matte line is showing or if the Centaurs will look real this time around, we can grab a bucket of popcorn  and maybe a chocolate frog and enjoy the flick like all the other little kids in the theater—young and old.