Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
A young boy enters a parallel world, full of magic and mischief, and finds he must save it from the influence of a dark, powerful wizard.
If this is a story that sounds over familiar, news that the boy concerned has the name Harry Potter might confirm that we are in well-known narrative territory.
Yet this is not the work of JK Rowling. It is the plot of a children's fantasy film from 1986, almost a decade before Hogwarts School had even been imagined. Now it is about to be remade in Hollywood.
Troll, directed by John Carl Buechler, was a low-budget hit in America when it came out. The Boston Globe called it 'an exciting, dark surprise' and the film achieved a word-of-mouth reputation after taking third place at the box office on its opening weekend, despite the fact it was up against the blockbuster Nightmare on Elm Street II. It has since continued to gain cult status as an oddity among film buffs.
Now Troll, which has a claim to the title 'the first Harry Potter movie', is to be remade by the same director, but with a much bigger budget. The new film is due to come out next year.
All the early publicity material for the remake put out by Buechler and the MoviePlus production company has been carefully accompanied by a lengthy disclaimer that Troll has not been 'prepared, approved, or licensed by any entity that created or produced the Rowling series.'
A spokesman for Rowling said that the author was not aware of the plans for a remake of Troll.
He said that she had never seen the original film, contrary to speculation on the Internet about plot similarities and the shared character name of the hero.
Buechler, who went on to direct the seventh of the successful Friday the 13th sequels, has said he aims to emphasise the family appeal of the story in his remake.
In Buechler's story, which he co-wrote in the late 80s, the Potter family move into a new apartment in San Francisco where a witch is imprisoning Torok, an evil magician or troll.
Torok, who can transform parts of himself into other characters, disguises himself as Harry Potter's sister and starts turning all the apartments in the block into a forest full of fantastic creatures.
