Dressing up as Harry Potter, even for Halloween, is definitely not a trivial act. The small town of Grigny, in the Rhône, is organizing its 6th “little wizard” market on Sunday October 29, two days before the famous Celtic folk festival. This festive event, primarily intended to entertain children, has existed for several years and now attracts around fifteen thousand participants. Faced with this success, the town hall decided to comply with the law by voting a budget of some 10,000 euros, the sum necessary to pay the copyright it owes to Warner Bros, the company that owns the the intellectual property of the saga adapted from the work of J.K. Rowling.
According to our colleagues from Le Parisien, this decision by the Grigny municipal council meets the demands of the lawyers of the production company Warner Bros who “hunts down those who use the image of the sorcerer’s apprentice without going through the cash register.” And now determined to continue this tradition of the “little wizard” market, the town hall also wants to establish a lasting partnership with the American company. A project that would not displease the producer, this town close to Lyon having become over time a sort of Hogwarts “made in France”, attracting enthusiasts aged 7 to 77 from the four cardinal points of France.
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For this 6th edition the organizers have redoubled their ingenuity. Magic tricks, scientific workshops on the art and how to become a perfect wizard, lessons on the art of disguise or how to use a toad’s slime, nothing escapes this Lyon school of witchcraft. In any case, in the meantime, the kids are impatiently awaiting these joyous beginnings of Halloween. Will they prefer to change into Harry Potter, Ron Weasley or Hermione Granger…? No one knows yet.