Harry Potter,Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger are gathered around Sirius Black as the full moon rises. It’s a crucial scene in The Prisoner of Azkaban that sees the escaped convict shed his human form and become a werewolf, foiling the trio’s capture of Peter Pettigrew, the man who betrayed Harry’s parents. There’s just one problem. The moon is completely covered by clouds.
“I think it took about four or five months after the initial request before they actually got the scene done,” Richard Wild tells me. In the past two decades, Wild – chief meteorologist at weather data site WeatherNet – has become Hollywood’s unofficial weatherman. When a studio wants rain, fog, sunshine, snow, or a full moon on a clear night, Wild is the man they call. From the new Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon to Mission: Impossible, come rain or shine, he’s their man.
While one might not expect the meteorological conditions for a host of major Hollywood movies to be in the hands of an upbeat, middle-aged man from Cheshire, they very much are. Blockbuster hits such as Jurassic World: Dominion, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The Northman, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, The Batman, No Time to Die, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker are just some of his recent projects.
Wild’s showbiz-adjacent career began in 2002, after a Warner Bros executive became sick of dealing with a long list of people at the Met Office so called Wild instead. He asked him for the forecast at their studios in Leavesden, Hertfordshire, where the Pierce Brosnan Bond movie, Die Another Day, was being shot. “He was like a pebble in a pond,” Wild says. “He just dropped and ripples went out. I now have over one and a half thousand [industry] contacts and 200-250 film credits to my name.”
It’s an interesting career turn for a man who readily admits he’s not a big fan of film. So much so, that Wild forgets the names of movies he’s helped on, and it’s up to me to work them out based on the various plot points he can remember. “I feel sorry for the kids and the real fans, because I’ve touched props, met people, and I don’t really have any interest,” Wild says. Working extensively on Harry Potter, for instance, Wild was given special access to the set and was able to meet the core cast of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint. Upon leaving, Wild saw crowds of fans at the studio hoping for a glimpse of the trio. “I saw so many fans begging for stuff and I’m thinking, I’ve touched Emma Watson’s cat,” he says of his brush with Crookshanks, Hermione’s feline companion.
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