After Star Wars comes Harry Potter. New Zealand Mint debuts the poster for the first movie in coin form

After a successful run through the nine Star Wars movies (the ninth coin should be imminent), the NZ Mint has turned its attention to the equally gigantic Harry Potter Universe and it fine selection of official movie posters With eight movies in total, we’d expect to see these issued at perhaps four per year for the next two years.

As with the Star Wars coins, these are one ounce fine silver coins of 36 x 53 mm in size and they reproduce the movie posters almost completely as original, with the exception that the white background of the original is allowed to remain as an uncoloured proof silver finish. It works well, and combined with superb packaging, will be a great item for the Potter fan. It’s a pity, a minor one, that they chose to use the US movie title ‘Sorcerers Stone’, instead of the international movie, and original book title, ‘Philosophers Stone’, but to be fair, it’s probably a slightly better poster design, in our view. Available now for around $85.00 USD, it has a mintage of 5,000 pieces.

One of the most popular literary and movie characters of all time, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has enthralled fantasy fans for the last couple of decades since its first British publication in 1997. Spanning seven novels that were serialised in eight movies, the Harry Potter Universe has a firm grip on third place in the biggest grossing movie franchises of all time ($9.2b), with at least two more Fantastic Beasts movies still to come at the time of writing.

It’s hard to imagine doing much better than that, but the original novels have managed it with ease. The biggest selling novels of all time, with over half a BILLION having been printed, they’ve been translated into eighty languages. The last four novels each successively broke the record for fastest selling book of all time, with the last one moving 11 million copies in 24 hours!

HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (released in the United States as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) is a 2001 fantasy film directed by Chris Columbus and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is based on J. K. Rowling’s 1997 novel of the same name. The film is the first instalment of the Harry Potter film series and follows Harry Potter’s first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as he discovers that he is a famous wizard and begins his education. The film stars Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, with Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger.

Warner Bros. bought the film rights to the book in 1999 for a reported £1 million ($1.65 million in 1999). Production began in the United Kingdom in 2000, with Chris Columbus being chosen to create the film from a short list of directors that included Steven Spielberg and Rob Reiner. Rowling insisted that the entire cast be British and Irish, and the film was shot at Leavesden Film Studios and historic buildings around the United Kingdom.

The film was released to cinemas in the United Kingdom and United States on 16 November 2001. It became a critical and commercial success, grossing $975.1 million at the box office worldwide. The highest-grossing film of 2001, it is the 47th highest-grossing of all-time (2nd at the time of its release; behind Titanic) and the second most successful instalment of the Harry Potter series behind Deathly Hallows – Part 2. The film was nominated for many awards, including Academy Awards for Best Original Score, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. It was followed by seven sequels, beginning with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2002 and ending with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in 2011, nearly ten years after the first film’s release.(WIKIPEDIA)