bkdelong

Some of you may remember I ran the Harry Potter Web site The Leaky Cauldron (TLC) for a few years. I am essentially Emeritus at this point. One of the key attributes of TLC was to always go to the source to verify information. A core value I brought with me and current Editorial Director/Webmistress Melissa Anelli bolstered with her long-time experience in publishing and reporting.

Around February 7th, TLC posted confirmation directly from Warner Brothers that actor Gary Oldman would be reprising his role of "Sirius Black" in the next movie - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Then the fun started. Oldman's partner and agent, Douglas Urbanski, began to use the news section of his Web site to dispute Warner Brothers' statements. A new update from Urbanski was posted today:

Today we take the further step of noting that it does not look likely that Mr. Oldman will once again play the role of Sirius Black. For reasons known only to the producers of the Potter film, Mr. Oldman has not been engaged. As we approach the beginning of March we are in the "window of commitments" wherein virtually any job accepted would render Mr. Oldman unavailable for this film. The producers, we presume, are well aware of how this all works. While one does not want to jump to wrong conclusions, there is a growing sense that it was never the intention for them to have Mr. Oldman return.

I find this fascinating and while I know fandoms have been used in the past to encourage the casting of a particular actor in a movie role, I wonder if this is really the first time we've seen this sort of back-and-forth in this large a fandom and this public a forum.