New infographic from Warner Bros. provides entire history of Harry Potter films

If you’re a Harry Potter fan looking for a definitive top-down chronology of the entire series, look no further: Warner Bros. Studio Tour has produced a detailed chronology of the entire film series. It provides novel titbits even for those who’ve read the books and seen the films dozens of times.

Included in the infographic is every significant release date, as well as interesting facts and anecdotes about the productions themselves. Also included is some of the facility’s history before Harry Potter came along, and even before it became a film studio.

Since its launch in 2012, Warner Bros. Studio Tour in Leavesden has proven enormously popular with Harry Potter fans, and also with those who’ve visited having never seen any of the films.

To appreciate how the studio came to be, we need to go back much further than that, to 1939. At the time the Ministry of Defence was massively stepping up its production of military aircraft. The future site of the studio tour was used to create engines and planes for decades afterwards, including a spell under the ownership of Rolls-Royce, and as a club for private aviators.

In the mid-1990s, the space was first used in the production of a major film. GoldenEye helped to propel a tired James Bond franchise back to the top of the box office. The first Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace, was filmed here soon afterwards.

But greater success was yet to come. The filming for the first Harry Potter film began on 29 September 2000, and a film came to be almost every year after that, until the final instalment hit cinema screens in 2011.

Just a year later, in 2012, Warner Bros. Studio Tour – The Making of Harry Potter opened its doors. For the first time, we were able to glimpse all of those iconic locations and items up-close. The attraction received royal approval the following year, with members of the Royal Family and JK Rowling in attendance. Since then, new attractions have been regularly added to the experience, with the latest being the opening of Gringotts Wizarding Bank.

Enjoy the infographic! If you would like more information on the Warner Bros. Studio Tour, visit https://www.wbstudiotour.co.uk/our-history.

Did You Know?

● The set for the Great Hall was among the first sets to be built. It could seat 400 children comfortably.
● Many of the impressive-looking books in Dumbledore’s office are actually telephone directories bound in leather.
● Daniel Radcliffe spent so much time underwater during the filming of the fourth film that he actually gained his PADI diving certificate!