One needn’t worry about the financial security of young Daniel Radcliffe, that’s for sure. As the title character in the preeminent film franchise of our times — a series which has grossed around $4.5 billion
worldwide, with the two hotly anticipated final chapters readying for
production in the wings — I’m guessing that Radcliffe could pretty much
never work again, eat out for every meal and still spend his afternoons
diving into piles of money like Scrooge McDuck, with no distressing
consequences. Still, while no one was expecting Harry Potter-type grosses for December Boys, Radcliffe’s first cinematic foray outside the comfortable confines of the fantasy genre since
donning the young wizard’s trademark spectacles, the manner in which
the movie vanished with barely a whisper of significance earlier this fall was rather astonishing. Released earlier this fall in the United States in only New York and Los Angeles, the film wasn’t given much of a fighting chance by
distributor Warner Independent, ringing up just over $50,000 in a
truncated, three-week run — probably approximately the cost of
cappuccinos on the set of one of the Harry Potter
films. Yet, strangely, neither was it able to tap into the vein of
Radcliffe’s international fan base either, pulling in only $935,000
overseas. It finally arrived on DVD last week, on December 11.

That said, the financial flop of December Boys doesn’t look
to much affect the manner in which the 18-year-old actor approaches his
career moving forward, since he says he took the movie chiefly to
sample a different sort of genre and work as part of an ensemble. Says
Radcliffe with a shrug during an interview prior
to the film’s release: “I’d love for the movie to be seen and people to
enjoy it, but I know some people may be resistant to seeing me in
another role. All I can do is pick things that I feel passionately
about.” For Radcliffe, who shot The Tailor of Panama before tackling
the role of Potter, but has since hardly had the time to skip off and
indulge indie filmmaking, the differences in style and scale between
the two productions were instructive. “There are a lot less people on set,” Radcliffe admits. “It’s a much smaller crew, but also more intense.”
“With Harry Potter, if you fall a day behind schedule that’s okay, but with December Boys it’s not,” he continues. “Some locations and days we didn’t have any
more time, so you have to be prepared to do more than one thing. On Harry Potter you do one scene a day if you’re lucky, and on December Boys you are doing four or five scenes a day, and you have to get them all done. You really have to be on your toes.”
Still, says Radcliffe, “I found that I quite liked the fast pace of shooting — it keeps the adrenaline sort of pumping.”

After a holiday turn across the pond in My Boy Jack, Radcliffe will be looking to his reprise his West End turn in Equus on Broadway. From there, it’s more acting, even though he has an awareness of the unique difficulties facing child actors as they
attempt to transition into more adult roles, not to mention actors
breaking away from iconic roles. “That’s why doing something like Equus
was important for me — to test and see whether this was something I
wanted to continue doing for the rest of my life,” says
Radcliffe. “And it was.” For the full feature, from FilmStew, click here.