WARNER BROS. PLANNING FOR LIFE AFTER DEATHLY

Contrary to what Warner Bros. says in its current ads for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, it all doesn’t end with the release of the movie. The studio is busily engaged in making plans to expand the Potter business in the coming months, according to today’s Wall Street Journal, which reported that, among other things, it is planning to convert the London studio where the eight films were shot into a “museum-style” tourist attraction by April. It is also planning to release Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in 3D, but apparently only on home video. Then there are plans by the studio to join with Sony and Potter creator J.K. Rowling to develop a new website called Pottermore.com. (A notice posted on the website urges fans to “come back on 31st July to find out how you can get the chance to enter Pottermore early;” otherwise, it notes, the official opening will come in October.) One thing the studio does not plan to do, the Journal said, is produce another Potter movie, although it does not rule that out, either. Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, told the newspaper, “If Jo [Rowling] doesn’t write another Harry Potter book, there isn’t going to be a new Harry Potter movie.” But Rowling may very well change her mind about closing the book on her books. At the London premiere of the movie last week, she said that while she had no plans to write an eighth Potter novel, one should “never say never. … It is my baby and if I want to bring it out to play again, I will.”