Last night, my fiance and I watched an old cheesy movie from the 80's that she used to love. It was called Troll. The first thing that stood out was that the main character's name was Harry Potter, and that he learns some magic in the movie. No, I don't think Rowing saw this movie and copied (since the name Harry Potter) isn't that Rare, but I just thought it was funny having other people calling him "Harry Potter".
Ironically, I was watching an old Monty Python episode last night that had a bit where aliens were turning the British into Scots. The first person to get zapped and turned into a Scotsman was named Harold Potter. In regards to Troll, the director John Carl Buechler apparently filed a lawsuit against J.K. Rowling just this year for 'stealing Harry Potter's name'. Good luck with that, dude.
Wasn't there some fuss way back when the first Harry Potter book got big that Rowling might've nicked the idea of a young wizard named Harry Potter from some other book? Similar themes and name or something. Hazy memory so I might be remembering it wrong.
There was a game called Simon the Sorcerer that had a kid in a magic school and he had the same look as Potter, with glasses and all, but the Troll Director can't sue. He's got nothing. You can find people named Harry Potter in the phone book. It was just a funny coincidence, and The Potter books are awesome. This movie...not so much, hehe
It was a Neil Gaiman character from his Books of Magic comics named Timothy Hunter, who was a young wizard with black glasses that had a pet owl. Timothy Hunter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The fuss wasn't from Neil Gaiman though, he said he didn't believe Rowling copied him. ::EDIT:: D'oh, me and my slow-typin' sausage fingers!
We have part 2. We got a DVD set for 4 bucks............................ .............. ...................
Ah, I think I found what I was thinking of: Nancy Stouffer's book The Legend of RAH and the Muggles, which featured a character called Larry Potter. Edit: No, wait - it looks like Larry Potter was a character in one of Nancy Stouffer's other books.
Yeah, but many times I've thought I'd come up with a new word only to Google it and find it already exists. But it does make you wonder...
Well I have written a movie similar to Bugs Life and The Surrogate when I was in highschool, but like these people, Rowing made it popular, so their loss, as it was mine.
Yeah, I was surprised too when I went to Troll's IMDB page a couple years ago and found that the main protagonist's name was Harry Potter. One would think that Rowling would have ripped the movie off, but thankfully it's just an ironic coincidence. Yeah, Rowling should have used the term "Mundies" (as in mundane), instead of Muggles for non-magic folks. Because of this, Stouffer sued Rowling for stealing her term. I don't know who won the case, though.
Stouffer lost, and ended up getting fined $50,000 for submitting fraudulent documents. Also, apparently none of her books that refer to Larry Potter or Muggles ever sold even a single copy (and 'Muggles' had a quite different context in her stories), so it seems unlikely that Rowling plagiarized them years later.
Thank you for that info, dude. So yes, Rowling did not plagiarize those books, and she most definitely did not plagiarize that bad B-movie. Though, the coincidences are surprising.