Variety reports: “Kenneth Branagh, who made his name directing and acting in Shakespearean projects, has signed up to play Gilderoy Lockhart in Warner Bros’ sequel to Harry Potter, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” The second film in the franchise is skedded to start production Nov. 18. Branagh’s character, a charming, handsome golden-haired wizard …read more!

Dark Horizons gives us a link this morning to the original Drew Struzan artwork for the last HP poster, which is up on his official site.

Thanks to Holly for the link to online ticket ordering in the UK for the two preview days’ showings of Philosopher’s Stone. Click here for a link to a list of theaters.

The Spell Binder now has the full text of the TV Guide article.

It seems WB is mixing and matching footage for several different commercials. Perhaps many of these are scenes from the final theatrical trailer – said by USA Today to be coming out Nov. 2nd, the same day Disney’s Monster, Inc. hits theatres. Here’s description of another one from C.S. Brown: I taped Kids WB programming …read more!

Pottermania in England: The Telegraph reports of “thousands of people queued at cinemas across the country to book advance tickets for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” UCI Cinemas sold 10,000 tickets in the first hour of making them available to the public. The company’s central box office, which usually has 100 active telephone lines, …read more!

Rames has printed an article from The Guardian talking about tourism being generated from the Harry Potter movie – complete with links.

Dark Horizons has some quite interesting news about future movies – including that Book 3 is currently being transformed into a screenplay and official (though second-hand) word that Book 4 is being considered for 2 movies due to it’s length. Maybe we’ll get back into the realm of the double-feature 😉 Harry Potter 2-4: ‘Raven’ …read more!

USA Today has a marvelous article about the upcoming movie – and we finally learn that the 3rd and last trailer comes out Friday, Nov. 2nd – stay tuned!

Of course, the mistake of putting a trailer on Geocities and asking us to link to it causes it to go down quickly due to too many accesses. Here’s a link where you can find ALL the television commercials at this point – including Coca -Cola and toys. Thanks, Patsie.