Comeback: The magic lives on

‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ already US best-seller


Reuters July 26, 2016
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child comes out on July 31. PHOTO: FILE

NEW YORK: Harry Potter is casting a spell over the publishing industry yet again. Nine years after the publication of the seventh and final book in the best-selling boy wizard series, the script of a new, sold-out London play entitled Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has become the most pre-ordered book since 2007, US-based book seller Barnes & Noble said on Monday.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is billed as the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and is to be published at midnight on July 31, just a day after the official opening of the London stage production of the same name. The play — based on an idea by British author and Potter creator J.K. Rowling — is set 19 years after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and features Potter as an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic and father of three who is grappling with his past.

Barnes and Noble said in a statement that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was its most pre-ordered book since 2007’s Deathly Hallows. It did not give sales figures but said the book was expected to be the biggest seller of 2016. In fact, midnight parties are planned in stores around the US for its release.

According to Amazon Books, Cursed Child is already its top pre-order in print and on Kindle e-books.” For the millions of us who are Harry Potter fans, a new Hogwarts story is a huge event,” said Amazon Books editor Seira Wilson. “I could easily see young fans adapting to the format and using it to act out the play on their own.”

Rowling agreed to publish the script after appeals from fans that could not get to London to see the play, publishers said earlier this year. The play is already sold out through May 2017. It opens ahead of the November movie of Rowling’s Potter spinoff book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and follows the April opening of a second Harry Potter theme park attraction at Universal Studios Los Angeles.

More than 450 million copies of the seven original Harry Potter books have been sold worldwide, in 79 languages. The movie franchise has grossed more than $7 billion as well.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 27th, 2016.

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