John Hurt to Film again as Ollivander this Month for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Actor John Hurt has made some new comments regarding his role as the mysterious wandmaker Mr. Ollivander for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Confirming his character will be in both films, John Hurt spoke to Rotten Tomatoes about filming again this month on the movie, as well as some frank comments on the studios in Britain, large franchises and more. Quotage:

JH:
I’ve filmed one, which actually is the last one, and now I’ve got the
penultimate one to do which is in November, and that wraps it all up.
It’s a big loss for Britain in terms of having a big studio movie here,
but it’s not representative of our culture in terms of the films that
we make. I am convinced that though Pinewood and Shepperton — the big
studios — playing host to big movies is very important, our film
business is in the independent world. Of that I’m convinced…

Do you think the big franchise movies shooting in the UK give a
false impression of the health of our industry? All these productions
move in and hire local talent, but they aren’t British films.

JH: No, they’re not British films. Even Harry Potter
isn’t a British [franchise]. We gave it to Warners, we just sit and
collect. That always infuriates me. I do think huge areas of the
industry are being neglected and we’ve lost the ability for
middle-budget films. When we did have a stronger industry — and not
just a business — we did have room for middle-budget films. They’ve
gone out of the window, as they’ve done in America as well, but a $20m
picture would be wonderful to make every now and then. We could do a
lot for that.

But it’s like any country, if you don’t have a lot of money to spend. And it’s interesting seeing how much money gets spent on Harry Potter.
It’s quite absurd, really. I watch it and think it’s just the same as
Hollywood. I look around and you’ve got three costumes there, none of
which are likely to be worn, and they’re all replicas of each other.
It’s a vacuous waste of money and it drives me insane.”

Thanks so much Joe!

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