Our influence in replacing Richard Harris (with Ian McKellen?)??

[Barry Hill]

Hi folks,


All this talk about Harris not playing his role as authentically as he
could makes me wonder what influence the "general public" has on
the choice of actors in sequels.

Usually, it's not an issue for movies, because they are frequently
one-offs, but AFAIK in this case Dumbledore plays a larger role in
future books (see PS: below), so a correct portrayal is more important!

Assuming we were talking about a politician, it would in theory at
least be possible to get him to step down and be replaced.

Would a petition be enough to do the trick? We'd probably need 50-100k
signatures to even get anyone to take it seriously though ... Assuming
each of the 3k subscribers on this list knew 20 people who would sign, and
popular HP homepages and other mailing lists participated, we'd be
going in the right direction.

Of course, there are many other issues to be considered: settlement
payouts; Harris sueing for breach of contract; Alternative actors
(e.g. McKellen)'s availability, etc.

What do you others think about the feasability of the idea?

Does anyone know of instances where a petition has worked in the past?

How about starting a poll to gauge the general feeling towards Harris:
- Happy
- Satisfied
- Unsatisfied
- Unsatisfied (would sign petition)

Regards,

 Barry
 
PS: A couple of words about my HP background: I saw the film
(twice) and have now read CoS. The other 2 are in the post from amazon
right now! This evening I'm going to see LoTR for the 1st time, and
I read LoTR, Hobbit, Unfinished Tales, Silmar. etc. a few years ago).
So I have yet to see McKellen's performance!!