Harry Potter

Thirteen years ago, J. K. Rowling captured lightning in a bottle and stamped it across Harry’s forehead as his signature scar.

The success of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was unexpected, came out of nowhere, and swept across the world in a feeding frenzy. Momentum gathered, and the first movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, was released three short years later. What followed was a phenomenon both the publishing and the film industries will be hard-pressed to duplicate.

This week’s release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 has been ten years in coming, and we’ve journeyed far with the characters. From the first movie to the last, change drove the franchise forward. There was nothing stagnant about the characters or the films. […]