Cinemark running Harry Potter Marathon all week long

I have no affiliation with Cinemark but they are running all the Harry Potter movies plus the Fantastic Beasts all week long for a reduced price of $5.

They did this last year for Marvel movies.

Plus you get to see it on the XD theater which is as good as IMAX to me. My local Cinemark has a THX certified XD screen.

Check showtimes on a daily basis as times change daily.

Count me in.....

 

Thank the maker!

"Harry Potter" has been missing way too long from popular culture!

 

There was a pass also to see all of them but it is sold out. Here's the Cinemark page for more info and direct link to the showtimes.

 

I'd just get annoyed with how many things they changed (in some cases needlessly) from the books.

 

carzy this week has harry potter lord of the rings (at regals) and marvel marathons going on at the same time. guess it is the slow season for movies.

 

And poor NH isn’t on the list.

 

The problem is is there's no giant film for this giant weekend. So they had to come up with some sort of plan to get butts in seats. My poor wife Vickie had been planning to see all the Marvel films, but she's going to have to skip a few to see the Lord of the Rings Marathon tomorrow.

 

Having grown up reading many novels, I was always disappointed when seeing the movie, for the reasons that you mentioned.

I saw the first movie before before I read the book. But, before reading the book, I had the feeling that the book would be true to the movie (only because this was the order that I saw and read them).

Reading the book, it did follow the movie very closely. Meaning, when they adapted the book to the screenplay, they were very faithful to the book in most all aspects.

Some things were out of order a bit. But that didn't bother me, because they were mostly clever sound bites and they did make the effort to keep them in the movie.

Should they have inserted them exactly in the same exact order as the movie, it would have effected the continuity of the scene.

Considering the amount of words in each book, it would have been some chore to adapt them to a screenplay, and keep it a reasonable length.

From the net.

When added all together, the Harry Potter books contain 1,084,170 words. Below you'll find the total word count numbers for each book in the Harry Potter series: How many words are in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stones? There are 76,944 words, (by comparison the L.O.T.R. trilogy has 455,125 words).

The first Harry Potter movie is 2:39. That is a long running time for any movie, let along a movie made primarily for young audiences (with short attention spans?).

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: 152 minutes

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: 161 minutes

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: 142 minutes

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: 157 minutes

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: 138 minutes

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: 153 minutes

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1): 146 minutes

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2): 130 minutes

Altogether, its 19 hours and 39 minutes, however, if we don't count the last ten minutes of each movie, during which they just tell us the workers, producers, etc. names, that is approximately 18 hours 20 minutes.

I would have to say that they did a superb job in being faithful to the original novels.

If the final book had been only one movie instead of being split into two, it would be about 4 1/2 hours.

By comparison, Titanic is 3:15, Doctor Zhivago is 3:20 and G.W.T.W. (Gone With The Wind) is under 4:00.

The figures speak for themselves.

The Twilight Saga movies were also faithful to their original works.

They even followed in Harry Potter's footsteps in breaking up the final movie into two parts.

These are examples of those rare moments, where the studio's let the movies be made the way that they were intended to be made.

 

Chris,so why do you think that is?

Labor day weekend and no end of summer blockbuster movie?

Seems like a big missed opportunity. Seems kind of dumb?

 

It's baffling to me. No Star Wars, no superheroes... No "tent pole" films at all. I mean there's plenty of good films out there to see, don't get me wrong, but there's no film that the people who only go to see a couple of films a year will go see. On the other hand because there's no 800-pound gorilla sitting on the theaters, there's a lot of great stuff that you should have seen that's still playing in the multiplexes. I don't know if those people will go see great films like Sorry To Bother You.

 

My joke with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (book 5) was that if they had shot the entire thing as a movie, it would've been 10 hours long and cost $600 million dollars. It is, after all, an 870-page book.

Around this time, I worked on the Anne Rice vampire film Queen of the Damned, and I had a similar conversation with the director about that book. They only could afford to shoot about 1/3 of that novel, because it's also a very long book that takes place over about 7000 years. There are limits to what you can do in a Hollywood film, even in 120-150 minutes.

 

I quite note this point.

Before Harry Potter and Twilight, I don't recall seeing where a single book in a large series had been broken down into two movies, in order that as many of the book's aspects might be preserved on the screen.

Here are the word counts of the final novel of each of the above mentioned series:

Harry Potter
The Deathly Hallows - Approximately 198,227 words

LOTR
The Entire Trilogy: 455,305 words

Twilight Series
Breaking Dawn - 192,196 words

You can see the similar lengths of DH and BD. While O.F.T.P. was the longest HP novel, it was simply not practical to separate it into two movies, being that it was in the middle of the series and there would be a risk of derailing the entire movie saga.

Even though Harry Potter and the Twilight series had large followings, I would bet that, by far, most of the moving going audiences had not read either series, before seeing the first movie (at least).

As someone who hated the editing decisions to chop things out of the original novels, of books I had read during my childhood days, I really applaud the decisions that were made to present these movies as intact as possible. In that, I feel that they were highly successful.

This is even a larger risk, when dealing with movies whose length has far more running time, than that of a typical Hollywood production.

Every movie in the HP series was well over two hours in length and aimed at young audiences.

 

My wife Vickie saw the Lord of the Rings Trilogy yesterday, and they showed the extended versions of all three films. We talked afterwards and she said that she prefers the original versions.

 

There's some Harry Potter marathons on TV at the moment I believe.

 

There are a few ultra-orthodox Lord of the Rings fans who still refuse to see Peter Jackson's films, because of the stuff he had to cut out and characters he had to condense.

 

My advice to those fans would be "Don't read any more books, if you are intent on seeing, the movies" Problem solved.

Following this advice, the could freely watch the Harry Potter series of eight movies, the Twilight Saga of four movies, the Hunger Games series of three movies.

And if they have already seen, The Wizzard of Oz, don't go back and read the book!

(Of course, there also those fans who tend to square off on the subject of L.O.T.R. vs. H.P., even though one series has nothing to do with the other).

 

Yeah, I'm well aware of that. And I also know that J.K. Rowling had the right (as a co-producer) to demand that they include (or exclude) certain things from the books, and generally had script approval. In a few cases, they dropped sequences but changed a few things to kind of combine events and even characters. I agree it's a monstrous effort to try to reduce what would be a 12-hour epic to maybe a 2-1/2 hour movie. To me, after a certain point the movies felt like the "Readers Digest" version of the books, leaving out a lot of crucial detail that I thought hurt the stories. But as Rowling has said, "if you want the real story, read the books. If you want a couple of hours of entertainment, watch the movies."

I love the Harry Potter books and the Lord of the Rings books, so count me as a fan of both. I think it's a very different audience for both, particularly in that most of the Potter stories are contemporary, despite being set largely in the wizarding world. It'll be interesting to see how massive the Amazon TV series version of Lord of the Rings becomes, particularly since they're talking about 70+ hours and a budget of a billion dollars.

 

How often, in your youth, did you read a book and watch the movie, which was completely changed and seemingly, for no legitimate reason's?

As a kid who did read the books, this practice, would annoy me to no end.

Of course, during the credits, you would find something like "based upon the character's...".

Rowling was very smart, in co-producing and retaining script approval. I thought that they did a great job, combining events and character's. They did an excellent job of doing this in L.O.T.R. too.

I like the way, both HP and the Twilight series seemed to have the "how much of the book can we fit in?" philosophy, as opposed to "how much can we cut out.

I think that having such a large already established readership, was everything. If the situation had been different, the books may have still been excellent books, but if they were relatively unknown, then the risk of translating them into movies would have been that much greater.

Of course, it's a double edged sword. If you disappoint your fans, then it is over before it has begun.

Keeping the fans, meant keeping true to the books (to the extent that was possible) and it vastly contributed to the success of the franchise.

IF, L.O.T.R. was not successful in this aspect, neither HP or Twilight would have ever come about the way that they did, they would have never happened.

I think that having a director who was committed to this philosophy was of utmost importance. Both HP or Twilight had the benefits of having this.

Having authors like Rowling and Stephanie Meyer's co-produce, did everything to keep their respective universe's intact.

Amazon does have the wherewithal to not only redefine L.O.T.R, but to rest control of movies from traditional Hollywood studio's grip forever.

For traditional movie theaters, the "gray haven's" might be upon us, and sooner than many might realize.

 

She initially got less money, trading more control for less cash, and it stopped several huge directors (including Steven Spielberg, who loved the books) from adapting them for film. Rowling insisted that the films use all-British actors, while Spielberg wanted to just cast the best possible actors for the role, have them speak in fake British accents (if necessary), and shoot it all in LA. She won that battle.

I have to say, the casting on Harry Potter was pretty brilliant, and you can't read the novels today without imagining those people in the parts.

Stephen King has spoken many times of his frustration at seeing his novels and short stories radically changed for film & TV (particularly Kubrick's The Shining), but nowadays he says, "my books are unchanged: they're right over there on the shelf. The movie is the movie, the book is the book. You want my version of the characters and story, read the book." It's fair to say he has much tighter control over film & TV versions today, particularly for the ones on which he's credited as a co-producer (which is basically an extra check for him to approve the scripts written by other people).

 

Well said on the casting for HP.

Snape was perfect and Umbridge also.

 

I think that this was her primary reason for wanting Spielberg off the project.

 

With all due respect I think all of the figures are completely meaningless.

A film is a film. a book is a book.

Every film ever made from pre-existing source material is just an adaptation, they don't have to be page for page copies.

The only film that is that I can think of is Watchmen, and although it's a good film it could have been a lot better with some changes.

Where as The Shining is radically different from the novel.

Books are just starting points, inspiration. People should not expect a 'book on the screen' approach - it never works and is a waste of time. It's two different mediums.

FWIW I think the Potter books are quite poorly written and need big changes to make them work as a movie. The best one by a very long way is Prisoner where they let the director really create a mood and focus on what was essential.

 

I don't believe that anyone has implied that they have to or should be page for page copies. The figures that I presented was to further illustrate the problems that would be encountered even attempting this.

The figures may be and apparently are meaningless to you, because, in your opinion, you have clearly stated that there does not need to be a meaningful correlation between books and the movie.

I don't find them to be meaningless, if I did, I would not have presented them in the first place.

My comments were also centered around the fact that due to the length of the final book (which was not the longest book), that it was made into two movies, as was Breaking Dawn in the Twilight series.

I believe we get that part , but...

There are those out there that who do read and enjoy the books, (often referred to as fans), who, like me, don't share in your opinion.

The point in separating the final books into two movies, in both of these franchises worked, because there was a good story line with a lot of information to support it, that was deserving to make it to the screen.

Since in each franchise, both final movies were quite successful.

From the net.

"We all knew Harry Potter would go out with a bang after a decade in multiplexes. Yet Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 is shattering even our very high expectations at the box office. Warner Bros. announced today that Deathly Hallows is the unequivocal highest-grossing film of 2011 in less than a month of release. As of August 8, the final chapter in the Harry Potter saga has totaled $344.8 million domestically to best Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and an astounding $801.5 million internationally to surpass Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The worldwide total of $1.146 billion lands Deathly Hallows just behind Avatar and Titanic on the all-time charts. Inflation and the artificial boost of 3D surcharges muddle the true importance of these rankings, but any gross measured in billions is still very impressive."

Closer attention to, "The worldwide total of $1.146 billion lands Deathly Hallows just behind Avatar and Titanic on the all-time charts."

Disagree...

I think your reasoning is not holding up here. The proof in the pudding, is the box office, which speaks for itself.

If the Harry Potter books had not been true to the books, which also means being true to the fan base, the HP franchise would have never have gotten off of the ground.

You do realize that Rowling made more money as an author than any author who has ever walked on this planet?

I never read the shining, so I can't compare it to the book, but I thought it was a very good movie.

I saw Carrie and read the book, and I thought that they were both interchangeable.

Other Steven King movie adaptations I didn't care for, because they were too far from the books.

A notable exception was The Stand, which worked because it was delivered in a mini-series format, that allowed the story to be told in detail.

Both The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2, were in the top 100 Domestic Grossing Fills of All Time.

The fans, the box office and myself, respectfully disagree with you.

You can in fact be true to the original works, when adapting such works to a movie (or movies).

That does not imply that "being true" means page by page or word by word. It is the feeling, the spirit of the book that needs to be captured and represented in another medium.

 

When I look at some the major franchises (that were book adaptions), L.O.T.R., Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, Divergent...

I think that they were all well adapted from the books and in each and every case, the casting was spot on. I don't recall seeing anyone in the movies, that I thought was out of place, casting wise.

IMO, without exception, everyone did a magnificent job of portraying their character's.

 

Great films RIP Richard Harris...he’ll always be my dumbledore.