Harry Potter fans should make a note of the date November 15 next year. Warner Brothers has given an early warning that the wizard’s second cinematic appearance will be released on that Friday, to ward off new releases from rival film companies. Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets has already begun filming, with Kenneth Branagh, Dame Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane and John Cleese in the cast. However, the third Potter film, planned for a 2003 release, may now be delayed a year to allow Warner Brothers to release two sequels to the action film The Matrix during that year. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which has taken more than £200 million in the 24 days since its release, has finally been superseded as the top film at the US box office by the remake of Ocean’s 11, starring George Clooney.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A gang of rogues, led by George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, stole Harry Potter's box office crown at the weekend. After three weeks at No. 1, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" made way for "Ocean's Eleven," an all-star remake of an old "Rat Pack" vehicle about a Vegas heist. According to studio estimates issued on Sunday, "Ocean's Eleven" lured $39.3 million from moviegoers in the United States and Canada, a record for a three-day December opening. "Harry Potter" pulled in $14.8 million, taking its 24-day total to $239.7 million. (The film is called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in English-speaking Canada and in most international territories.) Both pictures were released by Warner Bros. Pictures, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc. The gung-ho war story "Behind Enemy Lines" (Fox) slipped one spot to No. 3 with $8.1 million in its second weekend, while "Monsters, Inc." (Walt Disney) was steady at No. 4 with $6.7 million in its sixth weekend. "Spy Game" (Universal), starring Pitt and Robert Redford," fell two places to No. 5 with $4.6 million in its third weekend. Twentieth Century Fox is a unit of Fox Entertainment Group Inc. . Walt Disney Pictures is a unit of Walt Disney Co. . Universal Pictures is a unit of Vivendi Universal .

Like that of her own character, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling's life has the luster of a fairy tale. Divorced, living on public assistance in a tiny Edinburgh flat with her infant daughter, Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone at a table in a café during her daughter's naps — and it was Harry Potter that rescued her. First, the Scottish Arts Council gave her a grant to finish the book. After its sale to Bloomsbury (UK) and Scholastic Books, the accolades began to pile up. Harry Potter won The British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year, and the Smarties Prize, and rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. Book rights have been sold to England, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Spain and Sweden. A graduate of Exeter University, a teacher, and then an unemployed single parent, Rowling wrote Harry Potter when "I was very low, and I had to achieve something. Without the challenge, I would have gone stark raving mad." But Rowling has always written; her first book was called "Rabbit." "I was about six, and I haven't stopped scribbling since."

For Rowling, the change in her fortunes has been slightly bewildering. But her daughter has no doubt about her mother's new career: when asked what mommies do, she replies without hesitation, "Mommies write!" Harry Potter is the central character in a series of books for children and adults alike that has swept the world. Written by British author J.K. Rowling, the books follow the exploits of a boy who learns on his eleventh birthday that he is the orphaned son of two powerful wizards and possesses unique magical powers of his own. He is summoned from his life as an unwanted foster child to become a student at Hogwarts, an English boarding school for wizards. There, Harry meets several friends who become his closest allies and help him discover the truth about his parents’ mysterious deaths at the hands of a powerful adversary.

"Harry Potter is the kind of timeless literary achievement that comes around once in a lifetime," di Bonaventura said. "Since the books have generated such a passionate following across the world, it was important to us to find a director that has an affinity for both children and magic. I can’t think of anyone more ideally suited for this job than Chris." "From the first time I read Harry Potter with my children I fell in love with these wonderful characters and this world," Columbus said. "I’m thrilled and honored to bring J.K. Rowling’s classic story to the screen." Warner Bros. Pictures, through British producer David Heyman, acquired the rights to the first four books in the series, which is projected to include seven books. Said Heyman: "Chris has been pursuing Harry Potter for nigh on two years. His passion and enthusiasm are overwhelming. I know he will make a great film."

The studio and Mr. Heyman engaged Steve Kloves ("The Fabulous Baker Boys") to adapt the first book for the screen. Filming is expected to begin in England this summer. Columbus gained prominence in Hollywood with a trio of original scripts, "Gremlins," "Goonies" and "Young Sherlock Holmes." He went on to a tremendously successful directing career, helming such films as "Home Alone," one of the highest-grossing comedies of all time, and its smash hit follow-up, "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York"; "Bicentennial Man," starring Robin Williams; "Stepmom," with Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon, and "Mrs. Doubtfire," also starring Williams. He also wrote, produced and directed "Nine Months," starring Julianne Moore and Hugh Grant.

A publicity and printing campaign unprecedented for China began this week to introduce the globally popular Harry Potter book series to a Chinese audience. If the plan works, Harry Potter - or ``Ha-li Bo-te'' as he is known in Chinese - could be the biggest thing since Chairman Mao's little red book, and shake up the staid, preachy world of Chinese children's books.
``Children's literature in China is too earnest. Things that inspire the imagination are too few. Bringing Harry Potter to China is a kind of breakthrough,'' said Ma Ainong, one of four translators, all women, working on the series. Shepherding the ambitious undertaking is the stately, state-owned People's Literature Publishing House. Its editors compressed into four months the translation, marketing and distribution of the first three of the four books in author J.K. Rowling (news - web sites)'s series for a planned Oct. 6 launch. ``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,'' ``Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets'' and ``Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban'' will be released as a boxed set in a first-run of 600,000 volumes - the largest first printing for a commercial release ever in China, said editor Wang Ruiqin. Along the way, Wang and colleagues battled adversaries worthy of the dark sorcery fictional Harry and his wizard-school classmates face: nervous bureaucrats, skeptical literary critics and canny black-marketeers. The endeavor says much about China's publishing industry and its competition for readers.

People's Literature bested a dozen or so firms to become the 36th foreign publisher of Harry Potter, paying as much as $165,000 - a dear sum in China - for the Chinese rights. Wang wouldn't disclose the actual price. To protect the investment, proofs have been guarded, special light green paper was used for printing and the boxed set's packaging has been kept secret. Already, pirated Potters have appeared. The Beijing Youth Daily reported finding translations of all four books in a small bookstore recently. Suspiciously, the books carried the names of a translator of Taiwan's Chinese edition and the Tibet Publishing House. "This is what I've feared all along,'' said Wang. Although the Taiwanese publisher and the Tibet company denied involvement, Wang said the pirated books forced her to consider moving up the launch date.

This week, People's Literature sent pamphlets with the first book's 12th and 17th chapters to bookstores. The China Children's News carried the 12th chapter in its Wednesday editions, distributed to nearly 1.2 million primary and secondary schools. A Web site is being prepared to entice readers, offering them wizardry graduate certificates for answering questions about the books. All the hoopla has left critics wondering whether ``Ha-li Bo-te'' will sell to an audience raised on politically correct fare of a very different kind. "It won't be as successful as in the West,'' said Chen Xiaomei, an editor of the Chinese Readers News. ``All this talk of sorcerers, spells and phantasms is from the Western literary tradition.'' "Chinese children like to read about beautiful, pure things. The stories are very simple, not so complicated,'' Chen said.

A small test-market audience - the children of publishing house executives - felt otherwise. "While reading the first book, I really wanted to read the second,'' said Liu Muran, an 11-year-old sixth grader and son of People's Literature's distribution chief. ``My heart was thumping beng-beng.'' The translators and editors found much in Harry Potter that will resonate with Chinese readers. Translators drew on China's 2,500-year-old tradition of ghost stories and current pulp martial arts fiction. For Harry's magical spells, they alluded to incantations legendary kung-fu masters recited before fighting.

``This was the most relaxed and happy translation experience I ever have had,'' said Ma, the translator. She previously rendered ``Anne of Green Gables'' into Chinese, and her partners have translated ``Alice in Wonderland'' and ``The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,'' among other titles. Trying to remain faithful to Rowling while giving her words life in Chinese, the translators hewed to their original sounds. ``Muggle'' - ordinary humans who aren't sorcerers - becomes ``ma-gua,'' playing on a Chinese idiom for stupidity. Less successful is ``Hogwarts,'' the wizardry school. ``Huo-ge-wo-ce'' carries none of the allusions of the original to either the beast or a witch's brew ingredient. Still, all the talk about spells and incantations sent in-house government censors querying whether the books might promote the occult in the midst of the communist government's campaign against superstition and the outlawed Falun Gong sect."They said, 'Don't the books have to do with magic?' But we had read the books and told them it promotes the 'three goods''' - kindness, courage and loyalty, said People's Literature editor Ye Xianlin.

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