Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” smacks the big screen tonight, and enthusiasts of all-ages are expected to stampede to the film’s much-anticipated premiere.
Psychology senior Stephanie Wilson gushes for Harry Potter, living proof that he’s a magnet to more than the average fourth grader.
“It’s simple, but it hooks you in,” said an enthusiastic Wilson of J.K. Rowling’s four-book Harry Potter series. “You just get really into them - the way the chapters end with suspense, and you have to go to the next, you can’t put it down.”
She’ll view the $125 million Harry Potter film this weekend with her fiancé.
For Wilson, the Potter charm is a mix of nostalgia and fantasy, and maybe even an inkling of hope that magical, mystical world of Harry Potter could be possible.
“It’s fun to think that there’s something as a school for witchcraft and wizardry, where everyone has a magical pet that sends letters all over the world - that you can make things fly, ride brooms and be invisible.”
“I get teased a lot, but I don’t care,” she added. “I’m having fun with it.”
This weekend, Williamston resident Cody Chappell, 9, will host a Harry Potter party of sorts. Mom Pam Chappell was at Meridian Outer 6 this weekend and purchased tickets as party favors for the guests, who will attend the show together Sunday.
“We’re going to see the Harry Potter movie on Sunday, coming home and having cake and ice cream and playing,” the Williamston fourth-grader explained. “I’ve got every one (of the books), except for the fifth because that hasn’t come out yet. I’m going to read the next two for sure”
Harry is Cody’s favorite character, and if he possessed the wizard powers of Harry, Chappell said he would turn his enemies into frogs.
Cody’s sister Hunter, 7, said Harry is, by far, her favorite guy.
Why?
“I don’t know, he’s just cool,” she said. “He has scar power.”
Hunter would like to fly like Harry.
Various movie theaters around the country, though none in the Lansing area, are offering 12:01 a.m. screenings, and box-office observers predict the movie could break opening-weekend and opening-day records.
Laura Rice, assistant manager of Celebration! Cinema, recalls a similar frenzy when 1999’s “Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace” was released.
She estimates the Trekkie-based hoopla was greater, though people have been calling with Harry Potter on the brain for months.
“It’s a little bit the same, but ‘Star Wars’ was worse,” she said. “We definitely have stocked up on all of our supplies for the weekend, like candy, popcorn and pop.”
