Posted in: HBO, TV | Tagged: avengers, Clayface, harry potter, Peter Mandelson

How Harry Potter Is Trying To Change Ancient UK Laws Over Spoilers

How Harry Potter is trying to change ancient UK laws to prevent spoilers... and what's the likelihood of success? #harrypotter

Right now, American studios are filming a number of high-profile sci-fi, fantasy and action films and TV shows in the UK. More, I am told, than in the US, right now. We'll get into why in a minute, but currently they include Harry Potter, Clayface, Star Wars, Luther, Narnia, X-Men, Rings Of Power, Elden Ring, High End/Diamond Shitter, Highlander, How To Train Your Dragon, Viva La Madness, Ebenezer, The Beatles, Spider-Man, The Vision, Avengers, Bridgerton, Wednesday, Tomb Raider, A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms, Supacell, Slow Horses, Ted Lasso, Black Doves, Charlie Brooker's new detective show, even the Ghosts movie (with the radical revelation that the Ghosts are out and about outside of Button House). And tabloids, and online influencers are filming the sets and actors at work with drones, and there is nothing legally they can do about it. But why not? And why are they filming so many in the UK anyway?

Why the UK?

Last question first. This kind of thing was shown to be possible by Stanley Kubrick with the likes of Doctor Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey. He did so because he refused to travel, had settled in London, and in doing so discovered something no one else had. There was an availability of amazing actors who American audiences didn't know, but who had been classically trained on one hand through the theatre, with the Royal Shakespeare Company one of the biggest resources, folk were willing to do basically anything he wanted. And on the other hand, the BBC, funded by the licence fee, had developed enormous skills with tiny budgets. 2001 brought in a number of the Doctor Who crew and showed what they could do with a Hollywood budget.

But this hit overdrive in the seventies with George Lucas with Star Wars, and Jim Henson with The Muppet Show (and there was considerable crossover there), but it seemed to come down to a few common factors. Actors who treated the profession as a trade rather than a vocation, and so were just happy to be told what to do, basically like the carpenters or sound men on set. While you had to deal with unions, like in the USA, things were easier settled down the pub, and there was a strong pub culture around filming. But also pubs that closed at 11 pm, and after-hours drinking wasn't a thing, so people would be at work the next day, on time. Also, the pub staff are incredibly discreet. Add a few decades onto that, and you also get a special effects legacy crew, families working on these things, and suddenly, if you had a sci-fi or fantasy film, no other country (or at least English-speaking country) had such a concentrated focus of such people one hour away from you, who didn't demand healthcare. Also, they didn't let technology pass them by either, Soho is full of FX companies serving these studios – to the extent that you can tell when a new superhero movie is in town as Forbidden Planet and Gosh suddenly sell a lot more of the comics to young haggard men coming in at lunch, but who will tell you that their grandfather worked as a joiner on Empire Strikes Back and Superman II.

Also, the British are awful about talking about their feelings or expressing admiration without caveat. Egos are frowned upon or belittled, and A-Listers coming to the UK to work get a little nostalgic; no one puffs them up, no one tries to get a selfie with them on set, and no one gives them their screenplay to look at. It reminds them of their most fun time as an actor, starting out, when everyone was just part of the team. Everyone talks to you, but no one wants anything (or rather, they do, they just keep it to themselves). As long as you buy your round at the pub later (and alcoholics in recovery get the no alcohol beers these days), then it's a fun collegiate experience that gets sequels and franchises agreed to easily, as actors actually want to work with the same crews again and again. Which is conducive to getting films made that are part one of eight. None of this was ever intentional; of course, there's no wisdom here; it is just a happy accident. There are downsides as well, of course, but these are the upsides I have heard over the years from American actors and producers about why they are happy to suffer the jet lag and the eight- to nine-hour time difference. New Zealand has scenery that knocks even the Scottish Highlands, but they don't have the joiners who worked on The Avengers. And Peter Jackson spent a rather considerable amount of the Lord Of The Rings budget, not shipping in American actors, but British plumbers. There are also more castles and mansion houses, and close to London, which always come in handy. Oh, also, there are good tax breaks from the UK Government.

What's the problem with UK law?

But there's a problem with the UK Government, only now seemingly apparent, as technology races ahead. And that's drones, being used by tabloids and now online influencers. Because of such high-profile, high-curiosity projects being filmed in the UK, drone use is up. They might not be able to get anything out of the local pub staff, but tabloids can send drones over open sets. And not just tabloids anymore, but online influencer channels. And unlike the USA, UK property law isn't quite as wide-ranging, and it goes back to Magna Carta (did she die in vain?).

It's often cited but rarely studied. The Magna Carta legal agreement of 1215 was forced upon King John by English barons and imposed limits on the king's arbitrary power over land, possessions, and feudal resources, primarily to curb abuses such as unjust seizures, excessive feudal demands, and uncompensated takings. One key clause reads "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land." It was influential on the US Fifth Amendment that "no person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." It also restricted the government's ability to seize land or rent to pay a debt if the debtor had enough movable goods to cover it, enshrining personal property rights above other ownership rights.

Fast forward to the present day, and both countries are influenced by Magna Carta, how it was interpreted, and by current laws shaped by it. Basically, the US extends property and land ownership above the property, and the UK law does not, or at least, not nearly as much. In the UK, the Law of Property Act 1925 includes not just the physical land, but also 'corporeal hereditaments' including objects attached to the land, such as buildings and plants, establishing a three dimensional aspect to land ownership, as  'Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos', up to the heavens and down to the centre of the Earth.

In the US, for example, this very phrase was used by the Supreme Court in 2010 in Bocardo SA v Star Energy UK Onshore Ltd to uphold a trespass claim where one company drilled below the surface onto neighbouring land to extract oil. And it extends above the property as well, enabling developers to build higher and higher, with fewer issues regarding views, surrounding properties, and the like.

But in the UK, interpretation went in the other direction, and it was established by Judge Ellenborough in 1815's Pickering v Rudd that it would not be trespass to pass over land in a hot-air balloon, but would be trespass to fire a bullet over it. But more recently, and more comparatively in the 1978 case of Lord Bernstein of Leigh v Skyviews & General Ltd, the aerial photography company Skyviews flew over Lord Bernstein's mansion house, took a photograph of it and then wrote to Bernstein to sell him the photo. Lord Bernstein sued, saying this was a gross invasion of privacy, and demanded that they hand over or destroy all negatives or prints of his house. And lost, the court establishing that Skyviews did not cause any interference with any use to which Lord Bernstein might wish to put his land."

And that was the latest UK legal precedent regarding such privacy, established almost fifty years ago. Trespass is also less strictly legislated against in the UK, as people are allowed to enter other people's land unless they cause damage or pose a security risk, established by the Trespass – Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Most drone restrictions now are based on the Civil Aviation Act 1982 and the Air Navigation Order 2016, to prevent "recklessly or negligently cause or permit an aircraft to endanger any person or property", and drone flight restrictions apply in the vicinity of airports and airfields. This has also been used against drone operators when there are power cables above streets, in and out of prisons, and buildings belonging to the government, armed forces, police and the secret services. But it doesn't cover filming Mission Impossible

So production companies have used other methods. During the filming of The Avengers, Samuel E Jackson said that the production shot drones out of the sky, and "got" the people who operated them. But there's no evidence that it did, and under current law, they committed no crime, and shooting or jamming drones would also have been illegal.

Why Harry Potter?

In 2026, it falls to Harry Potter to try to change things. The new TV series for HBO is filming more hours this year than any other franchise, in more open spaces than any other production, and with a commitment of a decade of filming. It is of such high profile that it is attracting media coverage and influencer coverage from all over the world. And they are bringing their drones. This seems to have been the tipping point for the UK, and I have been informed by sources (down the Red Lion pub next to Parliament, of course) that there have been successful lobbying moves from Warner Bros to the UK government to bring in new legislation that would go back to overturning aspects of Magna Carta in order to give production companies limited rights over trespass regarding the immediate airspace above them. Which means they could take preventative measures against such drones, both in bringing them down and legally targeting operatives. The only issue, it seems, is whether the current Labour government will make it long enough to pass such legislation at all. The current scandal involving former US ambassador Peter Mandelson and his links to Jeffrey Epstein may be enough to bring the whole government crashing down first.  And if a currently likely-to-succeed Reform UK government comes in, will such a nationalist party really want to make changes to the Magna Carta in its first year, including increasing trespass law and restricting those British freedoms to go wherever we want? Also, it's the kind of thing the Green Party would not want in another possible joint Labour-Lib Dem-Green-SNP-anti-Reform UK coalition government either.

Warner Bros have also been successful in persuading social media companies like YouTube to take down such videos on copyright grounds. YouTube might roll over (and has), but other companies might prefer to go to court to test that, under UK rather than US law. Let's get ready to Rumble? Other studios have suggested that they might train eagles to take down drones, as you can't sue an eagle. Maybe it's something the Ministry Of Magic might need to consider?

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