Taking over $90m at the box office in its opening weekend, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone hit cinemas on Nov. 16th, 2001, making Daniel Radcliffe a star. With veteran film director Chris Colombus (Home Alone) in charge and screenwriter Steve Kloves (The Amazing Spider-Man) shaping that first installment, author J. K Rowling was still busy writing number 6 in this 7-book series. At that point, she had yet to become a cultural icon or amass more wealth than the British monarchy, but even then, Joanne Kathleen Rowling was already celebrated for creating the most famous teenage wizard in literary history.

Cut to 2024, Daniel Radcliffe is currently treading the boards on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. He has moved on from being the boy who lived and embraced a diverse career, thanks to 8 films and one character who has afforded him more creative freedom than most actors get in a lifetime. However, Warner Brothers have ensured that the Harry Potter franchise continues to bear fruit, bringing in over $9.5bn at the box office across 11 films. That boy wizard is now an industry who has his own theme park rides, television spin-offs and endless amounts of memorabilia. If anything, Harry Potter is more popular now than he was in his book-based heyday, raising the question of what exactly made those adaptations so special, and was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone still the perfect launch pad?

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