Their fate (think of “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” and “The Golden Compass”) suggests that the perennial appeal of “Harry Potter” on screen was hardly a foregone conclusion. But in the past decade more than a few promising franchises based on popular book series have failed to turn loyal readers into enthusiastic audiences or to bring in legions of new fans.
That none of the movies have demonstrated quite the same power makes it easy to underestimate their success. Rowling’s prose, a great many middle-aged readers were temporarily changed into 10-year-olds. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” was published in America in 1998 - a lifetime ago for many young readers, just yesterday for their parents - and that tale and its six sequels now seem like permanent fixtures of the literary landscape. The midnight bookstore parties are all in the past, and, with the opening of the first half of the film adaptation of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” an extraordinary pop-culture cycle is on the verge of completion.
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