Harry Potter fans have succeeded in moving a construction project that would have originally gone through the “grave” of the character Dobby.
The 125-mile Greenlink power connector, which costs £430million, is intended to link power between the UK’s National Grid and Ireland, running between County Wexford and Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire.
However, the latter site is known to Potter fans as the site of house elf Dobby’s grave in the film Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, and contains a pile of stones with the words “here lies Dobby” that many flock to; fans have been asked not to lay stones by the National Trust, who own the site, due to the beach being an ecologically sensitive site.
It has now been revealed that the cable has now been rerouted after a BBC interview alerted fans, according to project manager Simon Ludlam.
“We did the shot, we finished I went back to London, and they then aired it a couple of weeks later,” he told the Energy Revolution podcast. “And we got hundreds of calls, I mean hundreds of calls.”
He further recalled: “I said, ‘Dobby, who’s Dobby? I don’t know Dobby?’ I said: ‘He’s a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing is fictitious, what are you talking about?’ [The colleague] said: ‘No it’s very, very serious’.”
They then discussed “exactly how to reroute the cable so we wouldn’t go anywhere close to Dobby’s grave” and that now, “a lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead] and Dobby’s happy”.
However, they ended up going “quite close” to real Bronze Age remains, though and “avoided Dobby’s grave”.
Harry Potter is due to return to the screen in a new HBO series, which will feature newcomers Dominic McLaughlin, Alastair Stout and Arabella Stanton as Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Also on board are John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape, and Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall.
However, the cinematographer on the HBO series recently described filming conditions as “brutal” with young actors having strict working schedules.
“You have to shoot really fast, and the faster you go, the more you compromise quality,” Adriano Goldman told André Pilli on YouTube. “There’s no way around it, right? Obviously, we have a lot of resources, but it’s brutal.”
“The kids’ screen time is really brutal,” he added. “So the methodology is very specific. You practically have to pre-shoot all the scenes while they’re in class.”
Ahead of its premiere on Christmas Day this year, a trailer for the series was recently released, which proved divisive among fans.
The series has further attracted backlash due to author J.K. Rowling’s anti-trans views and hostility towards the trans community.
Star Lithgow has admitted he considered quitting the series due to backlash over his involvement amid Rowling’s views, while Frost has criticised Rowling’s views.
Elsewhere, the first film in the original series, Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, is set to return to cinemas for one week later this month to celebrate its 25th anniversary.
