I was watching the special features on some of my Blu Ray editions of the Harry Potter movies today and was surprised to find that there are some that I had not yet watched (including deleted scenes from the first two movies. Wow!).
In an interview on the Prisoner of Azkaban disc, one of the producers mentioned that the shrunken head character they added to the Knight Bus was enough to convince J.K. to introduce shrunken heads in a later novel. I hate to admit it but I can't recall which later novel shrunken heads appear in but I'll have to check.
The comment got me wondering, however, about something that I have thought about from time to time in the past: since the movies started being released while she was still writing the later novels, how much (if at all) did the film versions of her world impact how Rowling wrote the final three books.
The first film was released in 2001, just after the publication of the fourth novel, The Goblet of Fire, but while Rowling was probably still writing the fifth book in the series (The Order of the Phoenix). That means that the final three books were written after Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint had started to inhabit her main characters, after Hogwarts had been made real for the films, and after her early plots had been tinkered with to make them more filmic.
In fact, four films had been released by November of 2005, about the time when one expects Rowling was working diligently on the final novel.
So did the films have any impact on her writing? It's an interesting question. I wonder what J.K. would say about it. She's probably been asked so I might do a little on-line research to see if she's given an answer.
But we have to remember: even the author's thoughts on a question like this are not definitive. A writer can be influenced without even recognising it is happening.
I'll have to think about this one and get back to you. Meanwhile, any thoughts?
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