A Few Latino Harry Potter Geeks Up In Arms (Very Flabby, Pale Ones)

12 July 2007, 6:45 PM. By Carlos Posas

In light of the record-setting $12 million “Harry Potter And the Order Of the Phoenix” made in its midnight U.S. debut, we decided to poke around the net and see how the movie fared in the Spanish-speaking world. The search sent us to “Harry Potter’s most popular site in Spanish” (meaning, the only one): HarryLatino. After we stopped laughing at such unintentional punniness, the site informed us that moviegoers in some parts of the Latino world (gasp!) didn’t get to see it. A reader named Snake_2 reported that a mismatch in projector equipment and film has delayed screening indefinitely in Popayán, Colombia. Pincorto from Ibiza, Spain reports that copies of the film destined for the island somehow wound up in Barcelona. And in Monterrey, México, Chewie says audiences weren’t reiumbursed when a local theater showed them a dubbed version instead of the subtitled one they had paid to see. We can’t decide what’s more pathetic–that these kids (possibly grown men) are this desperate for a hit of Harry Potter, or that there’s a forum for them to say so.