Akhtar

Sir Alex Ferguson is in attendance at the Etihad for the FA Cup match between Man City and Liverpool. 👀

Every single department head on the new Harry Potter TV series is either an Oscar winner, an Emmy winner, or someone who worked on the original films. A few of them are all three. HBO is dropping a documentary this Sunday that shows the scale of what they're building. Alexis Wajsbrot is running the visual effects. He worked on two of the original Potter films at a company called Framestore. He left, spent over a decade on Gravity, the Spider-Man films, Doctor Strange, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (which earned him an Oscar nomination). Then he came back to Potter. Framestore itself has been part of this franchise since the very first movie in 2001. They created Dobby. John Nolan is handling creature effects, meaning he builds the physical, mechanical creatures that move on camera. He did the same job on the original films (Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire) twenty years ago. He also built creatures for The Witcher and Mary Poppins Returns. The cinematographer (the person who controls how every shot looks and feels) is Adriano Goldman. Goldman shot 28 episodes of The Crown across all six seasons and won two Emmys doing it. He uses old vintage camera lenses and lights scenes with a single light source rather than flooding them with brightness. The original Potter films were bright, wide, almost like a theme park ride. Goldman's work is darker, quieter, and tighter on faces. Hogwarts is going to feel different this time. Costumes come from Holly Waddington, who won the Oscar and BAFTA for Poor Things (the Emma Stone film). In that movie, she led 40 people who made over 500 costumes in 22 weeks. She trained at Angels Costume House in London, the world's oldest costume supplier. Mara LePere-Schloop is designing all the physical sets and environments. She built the world of Interview with the Vampire for AMC and won an industry award for her work on Pachinko. Hans Zimmer is doing the music. He replaces John Williams from the original films, making him the sixth composer in the franchise's history. The teaser trailer pulled in 277 million views in 48 hours after its March 25 release. Biggest trailer launch in HBO history. 32,000 kids auditioned for the three lead roles. Filming started in July 2025 at Leavesden, the same UK studio where all eight original movies were shot, under the internal code name "Dark Train." HBO is shooting Season 1 and Season 2 back-to-back, so the child actors don't visibly age between seasons. That was a constant problem during the original films, where kids would grow several inches between shoots. Season 1 premieres on Christmas Day 2026. "Finding Harry: The Craft Behind the Magic" drops this Sunday, April 5, on HBO Max. Nick Frost, who plays Hagrid in the series, narrates.

Where’s the good PR for marriage?? Nobody drops videos sharing the good experiences it seems like

IDF announces the killing of a soldier in Lebanon: Sergeant Moshe Yitzchak HaCohen Katz, 22, from New Haven, Connecticut.

Vance suggests Iran could have used nuclear suicide vests: “You talk about people who walk into a crowded supermarket and have a vest on, and they blow up the vest and a couple of people get killed, and that's a terrible tragedy. What happens when what's on the vest is not something that can kill a couple of people, but can kill many, many tens of thousands of people?”