Warner Bros. will release the next two “Harry Potter” films in 3D, a move underscoring the post-”Avatar” rush for extra-dimensional box office returns.

Studios executives around town have been scrutinizing film slates for opportunities to expand forays into 3D releasing. Warners has been testing footage from its upcoming “Clash of the Titans” — converted into 3D by an outside vendor — and the tests have gone so well that the studio has decided to release not only “Titans” but also the two-part “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in 3D.

Warners refused to confirm the decisions Tuesday, but an announcement on “Titans” — a co-production with studio-based producer Legendary Pictures — is expected by week’s end. Official word on the “Potter” pics also is awaited.

Conversion expenses have been coming down, so each film will cost just $5 million to change into 3D. Warners also will absorb an additional $5 million expense per picture to pay for 3D glasses for exhibitors handling the movies.

In a related move, Warners will push back the release of “Titans” one week to April 2. “Deathly Hallows: Part I” is set to unspool November 19, and “Part II” is slotted for July 15, 2011.

The only previous “Potter” pic to dabble in 3D was last year’s “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which included brief footage viewable in 3D in Imax venues. It was unclear whether “Potter” author J.K. Rowling had to OK the move into the third dimension.

Canadians will get to walk through Harry Potter’s wizard world next spring.

The Ontario Science Centre will host the exclusive Canadian premiere of “Harry Potter: The Exhibition” from April 9 to August 22, 2010.

The international touring exhibition is inspired by the “Harry Potter” film sets, including the Great Hall, Hagrid’s hut and the Gryffindor common room.

Visitors will learn about the craftsmanship behind more than 200 costumes and props from the boy-wizard movie franchise that stems from J. K. Rowling’s bestselling book series.

“Harry Potter: The Exhibition” debuted at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry last April and is now at the Museum of Science in Boston.

Tickets to the Toronto exhibit are now on sale.

The announcement of the exhibit’s Canadian premiere comes as “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is released on Blu-ray and DVD.

The final film in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” will hit theatres in two parts: Part 1 in November 2010 and Part 2 in July 2011.

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In the next Harry Potter film, most of the action takes place outside the hallowed halls of Hogwarts Castle.

The seventh, and last, book in J.K. Rowling’s series about the boy wizard –Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows– is being broken into two films, the first part coming out next November, the second part in 2011.

The first installment finds young wizards Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) struggling to find their way in the Muggle (human) world, with their own lives in the balance and the fate of the magical realm in their hands.

“They’re paranoid,” says Grint. “It’s quite a scary world because the Snatchers and Death Eaters are running around everywhere. Harry, Ron and Hermione are just camping out in random places, living rough, in regular clothes.” Snatchers and Death Eaters are minions of the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes).

Grint adds, grinning: “Me and Dan actually have some stubble.” His facial hair served as a kind of invisibility cloak for the lanky, redheaded Grint, who went unrecognized by fans recently while on location in the Welsh countryside. Dubbed a “road movie” by producer David Heyman, Hallows was envisioned by director David Yates as more grounded in reality than the previous Potter movies.

“It’s going to feel very real,” Yates says. “We’re going for a vérité approach. Being away from Hogwarts, they’re like these three refugees on the run. They’re out in the big bad world, facing real danger, unguarded by those wonderful benign wizards at Hogwarts. They don’t have a home to go to.

“We’re kind of pulling away from the magic a bit and bringing more reality to it,” he says.

Courtesy of Mivi through Melbot :)

It sounds like a new book in the Harry Potter series, but “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey” will be a high-tech ride and the marquee attraction at the “Wizarding World of Harry Potter,” a new theme park area opening in spring 2010 at Universal Orlando Resort.

The “Forbidden Journey” ride was named by author J.K. Rowling and described Tuesday by Universal officials in a Web cast revealing details of what the Potter park will look like.

The ride will takes guests through scenes and rooms from the blockbuster movies inside a richly detailed remake of Hogwarts Castle made to look 700 feet tall. Hogwarts is where Harry attends a boarding school for witches and wizards.

Guests will enter the “Wizarding World” through a station archway named for Hogsmeade, the magical village near Hogwarts. A plume of steam and a train whistle will sound the arrival of the Hogwarts Express. The goal is to make the experience immersive, so nothing outside is visible after guests pass the Hogsmeade station archway.

Rowling, known for carefully guarding the Potter franchise, hasn’t yet journeyed to Orlando, but the design team has made several trips to London to consult with her.

Other rides include the “Dragon Challenge,” a twin high-speed roller coaster themed after the “Triwizard Tournament” and the family roller coaster “Flight of the Hippogriff,” named for a creature with an eagle’s head and a horse’s body.

“Along those journeys they’re going to be swept up into the greatest parts of the movies and the books. We’ve pushed every technology available to us to give guests a theme park experience unlike any they’ve had before,” said Paul Daurio, producer of the Potter area.

The Harry Potter park will be part of Universal’s Islands of Adventure.

Art and set directors from the films, including Oscar-winning production designer Stuart Craig and art director Alan Gilmore, were hired to translate the movies into the park.

Every shop and eatery is Potter-themed. Honeydukes sells chocolate frogs and “Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavour Beans,” Ollivander’s peddles magic wands, Zonko’s joke shop has Sneakoscopes, and the British restaurant Three Broomsticks pours Butterbeer.

At The Owl Post, guests can send letters with a certified Hogsmeade postmark. Magical instruments and equipment are available at Dervish and Banges, including everything needed to play Quidditch — a game like soccer played on flying broomsticks.

“The interesting thing about Harry Potter is that the stories are so rich in themselves, so deep,” said Universal Creative President Mark Woodbury. “There wasn’t so much difficulty of creating the look, it was, ‘How do you execute at a level of authenticity that is unquestionable?’”

There could even be new footage of Potter stars shot on actual sets from “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” A Universal spokesman declined comment on the issue, but the company was explicitly granted those privileges in its 2007 licensing agreement with Warner Bros. Consumer Products Inc., according to the contract filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Potter area will be Universal’s third big-ticket addition in three years. SEC filings from the company estimate the combined cost of The Simpsons Ride, Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit and Wizarding World at between $275 million and $310 million.

Simultaneously, the resort owned jointly by NBC Universal and private equity company The Blackstone Group finds itself on shaky financial footing. If it cannot find refinancing, $1 billion in long-term debt may be maturing as soon as April, the company said in SEC filings.

The Potter park is sure to prove popular not just with American fans but also with visitors from the United Kingdom, Potter’s home and the largest source of international tourism to Orlando, with about 1 million arrivals a year.

“It couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Danielle Saba Courtenay, spokeswoman for the Orlando Convention and Visitors Bureau. “There is such an affinity for the characters, particularly in the United Kingdom, and we do expect that the pent-up demand and having such a strong name will drive traffic to the area.

“It’s such a huge worldwide brand, and the only place in the world you’re going to be able to experience it is in Orlando,” she said.

An elite squad of guinea pigs has worked its own brand of magic at the box office, taking the No. 1 spot from boy wizard Harry Potter.

The 3-D “G-Force” was the top movie at the box office this weekend, opening with $32.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. The Walt Disney release from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, with its mixture of live action and computer-generated animation, is a “Mission: Impossible”-style adventure. It features voiceover work from Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Tracy Morgan and Penelope Cruz as resourceful rodents.

Last week’s No. 1 film, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” came in a close second with an estimated $30 million. That’s a whopping 61-percent drop from its huge opening last weekend of $79.5 million.

Coming in third was another of the week’s wide releases, the battle-of-the-sexes romantic comedy “The Ugly Truth,” which had a $27 million opening.

The sixth installment in the Harry Potter franchise has now made $222 million total, which is $14 million ahead of where part five, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” was after 12 days in theaters in 2007. And this week, “Half-Blood Prince” will start showing on 166 IMAX screens, which the last “Harry Potter” movie did from the start.

“So we’re coming in with this one (in IMAX) a little bit late, but it’s going to be a great addition and it’ll keep our momentum going,” said Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.’ head of distribution.

The sixth installment of the wildly successful Harry Potter series conjured up an estimated $79.5 million for its opening weekend at the box office, putting its first five days at an impressive $159.7 million–a franchise best. But even with its family-friendly PG rating, Harry left some room out there for other kid-oriented fare, specifically Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, which in its third weekend dropped a scant 36% to $17.7 million. Its total gross now stands at $152 million. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen also held on remarkably well, falling a solid 43% to $13.7 million. The Michael Bay-directed juggernaut’s four-week gross has now reached $363 million.

There was little room — or much love, for that matter — for Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno. Unlike Borat, which in its second weekend increased 7% when the studio added a thousand theaters, Bruno fell like a stone, losing 73% of its first weekend value for an additional $8 million. Its 10-day gross now stands at $49.5 million. Rather, audiences chose to stick with the comedy The Hangover, which in its seventh weekend in theaters fell only 16% to $8 million. One of summer’s most unlikely success stories now boasts a total take of $235 million.

Fox Searchlight seems to have another hit on their hands with the indie romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer starring Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Opening in a limited 27 theaters, the film grossed $837,588 for a per-screen average of $31,022. Between Harry, Transformers and The Hangover, 2009’s summer is up close to 4% from last year, even though this weekend was off a huge 39% due to comparisons to last year’s The Dark Knight which opened to the biggest opening ever last year at this time.

How do you feel about Dumbledore becoming somewhat of an icon for the gay rights movement?

It’s wonderful. I grew up around gay people my entire life, basically, that’s possibly why I’m quite camp, and some people think I’m gay when I meet them, which I think is awesome. It’s always good to keep them guessing [laughs]. I don’t go on any blogs or chats or anything, but my friends are demons for them, and apparently someone said “Daniel Radcliffe is gay. He’s got a gay face!” [Laughs] I really don’t know what a gay face is. But I think it’s wonderful that Dumbledore was outed as gay … Half of me thinks Jo Rowling just did that to see if she could piss off the right wing, but I’m not sure how true that is. I think she had it planned, I think she always knew he was gay.

What do you make of the ‘Harry Potter’-’Twilight’ rivalry that’s been brewing?

It’s very funny. It’s very much like the ‘Lord of the Rings’ rivalry, in that it was a rivalry mainly built up by the media, for the media. I met Elijah Wood once, I met Peter Jackson, I met Orlando Bloom, and they’re all really cool. Did we talk about the rivalry? Did we [ever]. Having Rob Pattinson be in both films is quite funny. I’ve never even seen ‘Twilight,’ to be perfectly honest with you, and it’s actually really interesting to me. Being such a central part of the ‘Potter’ thing, being so in the middle of it all, I have no idea how the rest of the world sees the ‘Potter’ franchise, which is why it’s quite interesting for me to watch the ‘Twilight’ franchise explode globally and have some sense of how people must view us.

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