Emma Watson, although earning less, ends up as the top-earning actress, apparently earning around £19m last year, which makes her 14th on the list of Hollywood earners. The only other woman in the top 20 was Cameron Diaz.

Rupert Grint comes in at 15th with similar earnings to Watson.

Harry Potter became the first new global superhero of the 21st century, with JK Rowling following JM Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming as a writer who has created a character with universal appeal.

In one scene, “a horcrux [carrying a piece of Voldemort's soul] defends itself by producing nightmarish visions, and one shows Hermione and Harry embracing and kissing,” explained Yates. “It’s something intriguing and sensual for Rupert to react to, and Dan will be bare for that.”

via io9.

I loved Harry Potter, but that epilogue was such an astounding failure of imagination on Rowling’s part! And in a way, it throws the entirety of all seven novels into doubt retroactively.

I felt the problem she failed to solve was the question of, “here’s a young man who can do magic, who has defeated the enemy of humanity when her [sic] was 18 – what’s the rest of his life look like?” And the best she can imagine is that he marries his high school sweetheart and puts on a big gut and lives in the suburbs. What a disaster!

Graeme McMillan at io9 believe this is going to cause some unhappiness in Potter fans but I agree with him. You could argue that after the early life Harry has all he wants is a ‘normal’ life and an auror is a fairly prestigious job, but as someone who was a shoe in for Minister of Magic you’d have to class it as underachieving.

I stumbled across some alternative book cover designs for the HP series by M. S. Corley. I love this style of design, reminds me of posters for Hitchcock films and intros by Saul Bass.

Apparently the artist has been asked not to sell prints, but the design have been passed to the relevant people at Bloomsbury and Scholastic (the publishers) to see if they would be interested in making versions with these cover available.

If you like these check out the versions for A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Chronicles of Narnia and the His Dark Materials trilogy.