The Harry Potter franchise is filled with impressive special effects. However, when it comes to movie magic, you can’t always rely on a green screen. Sometimes you need to work with mother nature, and sometimes she isn’t that helpful. Speaking with The Independent, Hollywood weatherman Richard Wild revealed that one scene in the Harry Potter movies took five months to film – thanks to some cloudy skies.
Wild has been the chief meteorologist at weather data site WeatherNet for over 20 years, and is also Hollywoo’’s go-to call whenever a studio is looking to shoot in rain, fog, snow or sunshine. Having worked on hit franchises such as the TV series Game of Thrones or the spy movies Mission: Impossible, it makes sense that Warner Bros would work closely with Wild when filming the 2004 fantasy movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
In the 2000s movie, we see a scene where the Harry Potter character Remus Lupin turns into a werewolf courtesy of a full moon. The cursed Hogwarts teacher then goes on a rampage that ultimately allows the Harry Potter villain Peter Pettigrew to escape justice and reunite with the big bad of the franchise Voldemort.
It is an important scene, but there was one big problem. While filming, there wasn’t a clear night to capture the vital lunar moment. “I think it took about four or five months after the initial request before they actually got the scene done,” Wild said.
While mother nature may not always work well with moviemakers and meteorologists, luckily, the Harry Potter scene did get filmed in the end. Wild’s next star-studded gig isn’t in the fantasy genre, though.
Currently, he is working on the tenth action movie in the Fast and Furious franchise, Fast X, which is scheduled to hit theatres on May 19, 2023.