Harry Potter followers in China are preparing to roll out the red carpet on Saturday for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth movie from J.K. Rowling's megahit fantasy series. Moviegoers in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, and Dongguan in southern Guangdong Province will get to experience the IMAX 3D version.

The latest installment of the schoolboy wizard film series was directed by David Yates, a Brit best known for the multilayered TV thrillers State of Play and Sex Traffic.

With enthusiasm peaked around the world ahead of the release, the film seems to face up to the huge expectations. The actors, comfortable in the roles they have been polishing for almost eight years, are a pleasure to watch, growing up on screen and within the story.

The film opens as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is undergoing a gradual takeover by the bureaucratic Ministry of Magic and its emissary, Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). A sense of impending doom is heightened by a series of nightmares that link Harry (Radcliffe) ever more closely to the devilish Voldemort, bringing Rowling's saga into even darker territory. There's also a new love angle: Harry's first kiss with fellow student Cho Chang (Katie Leung).

Since its world premiere on July 13, the boy wizard has dominated international box office. The film took in $12 million overnight in its preview showings in the US alone. The amount put the film second behind Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End in preview-showing revenues. The Disney film earned $13.2 million in preview showings on May 24 when it was previewed on 3,100 screens.

All told, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix obliterated any concerns over franchise fatigue as it conjured up the best foreign debut of the five Harry Potter films. The quintet's now grossed a collective $2.6 billion overseas and $3.9 billion worldwide, with two more films - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - coming in 2008 and 2010.

The first Harry Potter movie was released in 2001. Radcliffe and co-stars Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who play Harry's friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, have been at the center of the Potter storm for almost half their lives.

Millions of Chinese Harry Potter fans are expected to flood theaters for the rest of the week despite the less favorable comments by film critics, who said the film is too dark-themed and somewhat tedious. In China, the Harry Potter phenomenon has become impossible to ignore.

Before the opening of this movie, the publication of the seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, on July 21, has been a craze among Chinese readers.

Thousands of Harry Potter fans in China swarmed into bookstores in Beijing on July 21 to get the boy wizard's adventures after standing in line for several hours from the mid-night. Chinese bookstores opened their doors for sales of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at 7:01am, Beijing time, together with the world.

More than 200 books were sold at Wangfujing Bookstore in 40 minutes. The Beijing Book Building sold 2,301 books by 6 pm on July 21, 700 more than first-day sales of the sixth version.

The enchanting Harry Potter stories fascinated Chinese readers the moment they made their way to the country's bookshelves in October 2000, courtesy of the People's Literature Publishing House.

Fans believe that Harry Potter books have wonderful plots, rich imagination and a unique fairy tale world, which reflect people's wish to realize dreams, punish evil and advocate justice. Although essentially a children's novel, there is no shortage of adults who openly admit to being enthralled by the bestsellers.

A Harry Potter theme park is set to open in Universal's Islands of Adventure Theme Park in late 2009, complete with the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the Forbidden Forest and Hogsmeade village, according to Tom Williams, chairman and CEO of Universal Parks and Resorts announced early this June.

The Harry Potter attraction would be like "a theme park within a theme park" spanning about 20 acres of Islands of Adventures' 85 total acres. The Wizarding World will feature rides, shops and restaurants all based on the fictional world of Harry Potter.

(China Daily 08/10/2007 page4)