Universal Studios Florida will add a new section inspired by J.K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter book series.

Opening in 2014, Diagon Alley is named after the magical shopping district in the fantasy series. The new cover for Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone (created by artist Kazu Kibuishi) shows Harry exploring the magical shopping district.

Perhaps the architects will use this illustration as inspiration for designing the new section?

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’ve embedded a complete collection of these Harry Potter-themed posts below. If you thought that the evil Lord Voldemort caused the power outage at the New Orleans football game or rooted for the Voldemort Raisins, you should read these tweets.

Harry Potter tweets still rule the Internet. Last February, the Professor Snape Twitter feed (a parody account dedicated to the famous Harry Potter character) published the most popular tweet of the Academy Awards.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

From The Hobbit to Harry Potter, Hollywood loves dividing popular novels into two separate films.

With the second adaptation of Stephenie Meyer‘s Breaking Dawn coming to theaters this weekend, we caught up with screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg to find out what it was like to break the novel into two pieces.

She explained in an email interview: “There was a very natural place at which to break the two books.  The second movie needed a little filling out, but the book itself offered many possibilities for that.  Because the book is all told from Bella’s point of view, things sometimes happen off the page and are related by Bella after the fact — for instance, when Jacob tells her father she’s a werewolf.  In the book, Bella finds out about this conversation after it happened, but in adapting the movie, I got to write the conversation itself.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

During the virtual event, which drew more than a million Harry Potter fans, Rowling discussed her next writing project. She said, “The next thing I publish is likely to be a book for children. The reason, I’m not committing myself wholeheartedly, is because after fifteen years of being a writer for Harry Potter, where you would say something and someone would seize on it and say, ‘You are definitely doing that now.’ And you kind of thought you weren’t allowed to change your mind. And it got a little intense, so I try not to commit myself with my plan. So I’m not 100 percent sure about doing it, but I think it will be a book slightly more for children.” continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you want to find out more about the top secret novel before it comes out on September 27th, you should read the whole “Mugglemarch” profile.

SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want to know more about the book, you should stop reading now. Below, we’ve collected five spoilers from the article that show us more about the book.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Actor Kenneth Branagh (who plays Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in the Harry Potter films) recited a passage from William Shakespeare‘s The Tempest. A parade of nurses, doctors and child patients with books followed in rolling beds.

Author J.K. Rowling read a selection from J.M. Barrie‘s Peter Pan. After Rowling’s reading, a giant-sized Lord Voldemort popped up. A crew of women dressed as Mary Poppins wielded umbrellas and banished the Harry Potter villain.

Click here to find out when you can watch the opening ceremony in your neighborhood. Follow this link to view photos from the ceremony. What do you think?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What if Harry Potter ended up with a boring desk job as an adult, entering spreadsheet figures and staring at social networks all day on his computer?

The new parody series “Harry Potter and the Ten Years Later” imagines a pretty miserable adult life for J. K. Rowling‘s boy wizard, including wine, adult conversations and a little bit of NSFW language. We’ve embedded the video above–what do you think?

io9 has more about the show: “Yes, Harry married Ginny and got that job as an auror, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. After the demise of He-Whose-Name-I-Can’t-Quite-Remember, there hasn’t been much call for dark wizard hunters, and all Ginny can think about is making little Potter babies. Throw in a departmental downsize and Ron leaving Hermione, and it’s more than Harry can handle. But someone may be looking to pull him back into the battle of good vs. evil.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The novelist responded with a warm and encouraging letter, sharing some advice that all you people can use during the rough times. Letters of Note has reprinted both letters, sharing them with a wider audience. Here is an excerpt rom Rowling’s letter.

I know what it is like to be picked on, as it happened to me, too, throughout my adolescence. I can only wish that you have the same experience that I did, and become happier and more secure the older you get. Being a teenager can be completely horrible, and many of the most successful people I know felt the same way … You’re now standing on the threshold of a very different phase in your life, one where you are much more likely to find kindred spirits, and much less likely to be subject to the pressures of your teenage years.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

J.K. Rowling has written new Harry Potter content for Sony’s Book of Spells, a video game for the Sony PlayStation Wonderbook.

The game will include “backstories to the famous spells, valuable lessons and brand new creatures” written by Rowling. In the video embedded above, you can see a simulation of the video game–an interactive book-like object that will bring Harry Potter spells to digital life.  What do you think? Here’s more from the release:

Written by Miranda Goshawk over two hundred years ago, the Book of Spells can be found in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library. This advanced textbook will assist students on their journey to becoming an accomplished witch or wizard. Read, discover, learn and practice spells such as Incendio, Wingardium Leviosa and Expelliarmus, as well as discover mischievous notes, spells and humorous anecdotal facts scribbled into the margins by previous Hogwarts students. J.K. Rowling has written a conundrum that leads you through the experience, providing insight into the values a witch or wizard has to learn, and inviting you to journey through the book to unlock new content, rewarding successful students along the way.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

J.K. Rowling will publish a hardcover Hogwarts Library Box Set with Bloomsbury later this year. The publisher mentioned the boxed set in its financial results for the year, an extra bonus for Harry Potter fans. 

The publisher shared these photos on Twitter: “THE HOGWARTS LIBRARY BOXED SET will contain beautiful hardback editions of the 3 Harry Potter school books!”

As you can see by the picture, the set will include Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them and Quidditch Through the Ages (both published as a set in 2001). The set will also include a copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a book first published in 2007.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In honor of National Poetry Month, we’ve dug up a video featuring actor Ralph Fiennes reading William Shakespeare‘s “Sonnet 129.”

While many have come to know Fiennes for playing Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort, he is also a respected stage actor. He won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Hamlet in the 1995 Broadway production.

Fiennes recorded this reading for the 2002 compilation album, “When Love Speaks – The Sonnets.” What’s your favorite Shakespearean sonnet?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The voting period for round one ends today at 2 p.m. CST. These antagonists come from a diverse range of titles; from William Shakespeare‘s Iago (the play Othello) to Ken Kesey‘s Nurse Ratched (the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) to J.K. Rowling‘s Lord Voldemort (the Harry Potter series).

Here’s more from the website: “All epic stories have the same things in common: Confrontation. Tension. Obstacles. A proper antagonist propels the story, raises the stakes, and does everything in his, her or its power to win each battle. We thought we’d give these scoundrels a bonus round, sans any do-gooders to get in their way – a proper second chance to prove once and for all who’s the baddest one of all.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

After the Harry Potter franchise was not nominated for Best Picture this year, Huffington Post writer Linda Kenney Baden suggested that fans of the boy wizard consider boycotting the Academy Awards.

Here’s an excerpt: “Enough already Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences– start nominating movies that are terrific — no matter the genre. Some of the nominated movies are boring, unwatchable, obtuse or totally uninteresting to moviegoers and not just the youth audience that makes up 80 percent of the cinema going public … Is it time for the movie public — the viewers — to engage in a national TV boycott?”

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2 received three nominations for this year’s Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Makeup and Best Visual Effects.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The proceeds derived from the Internet auction will benefit the NEA Foundation’s “Art Inspires Learning, Learning Inspires Art” initiative. This project funds arts education grants for teachers. Follow this link to check out the artwork.

Here’s more from the release: “This initiative was inspired by Eric Carle‘s picture book The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse, which celebrates imagination and artistic freedom. Each donated piece of art will feature that artist’s interpretation of a horse and celebrates imagination and the many and varied ways that each artist sees the world around him/her. The auction will include three waves of art: Group 1 will take place October 17th-27th. Group 2 will take place October 31st-November 10th. Group 3 will take place November 14th-24th.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In this episode of “Cubes,” we tour the corporate world headquarters of Scholastic. The company known for Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and, of course, Clifford the Big Red Dog is based out of two conjoined buildings in Manhattan’s SoHo district. The space includes Scholastic’s flagship bookstore, a huge rooftop terrace, one-of-a-kind Harry Potter memorabilia, and a 4,000-square-foot auditorium that recently hosted a performance from Taylor Swift.

For more videos, check out Mediabistro.tv, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.