04/11/2002 - Pottermania hits London again with star turnout at the premiere with hundreds of eager fans crowding Leicester Square but beware the new James Bond...

Last night, Leicester Square in London was filled with apprentice witches and sorcerers wearing their Halloween costumes to welcome the cast, crew and special guests at the premiere of the new Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets.
The hundreds of fans were delighted to wait for hours in the pouring rain for the pleasure of seeing their heroes in the flesh. The juvenile contingent was lead by Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Rupert Grint (Harry’s ginger–haired friend) and Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) while the older cast members included Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman, Julie Walters and Kenneth Branagh who plays Hogwart’s Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts. Guest stars attending included Glenn Close and Vinnie Jones.
The US director Chris Columbus called the new film “darker, funnier than the last Harry Potter”, and according to British daily newspaper, “The Independent” Harry Potter 2 is “filmmaking at the highest pitch of technical accomplishment, beneath which the human element is having the life squeezed out of it”.
Expectations are running high for Harry Potter And the Chamber of Secrets - scheduled to open in the UK on 15 November. However, the film is already facing stiff competition for advertising space with the new James Bond film, Die Another Day, that will open a week later.
Both films will occupy almost half the UK’s 3,000 screens, leaving little screen space for art-house fare.