Well, pickle my wand and call me Dumbledore, but the rumor that Warner Bros wants to make Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final Potter book, into two movies is quite true. The Los Angeles Times reports that Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part I will hit in November of 2010 while Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II will be released in May of 2011.
“I swear to you it was born out of purely creative reasons,” producer David Heyman told the paper on a set visit, something to which CHUD has never been invited*. “Unlike
every other book, you cannot remove elements of this book. You can
remove scenes of Ron playing quidditch from the fifth book, and you can
remove Hermione and S.P.E.W. [Society for the Promotion of Elfish
Welfare] and those subplots . . . but with the seventh, that can’t be
done.”
The question, Heyman said, is where to split the story. “[H]ow do you make them one but two separate and distinct stories? Do you
break it with a moment of suspense or one of resolution? These are the
interesting challenges. But each book has presented its challenges.”
I don’t like this one bit, honestly, since I don’t feel like Deathly Hallows offers all that much more story than Order of the Phoenix, which managed to be one of the shortest Potter books. But the series has made four and a half BILLION dollars to date, so who can be surprised that Warner Bros wants to get one more go of it?
What’s interesting is that Warner Bros seems to be more interested in multiple film deals up front these days; they just committed to a whole mess of Akira movies, for instance. I think this is reflective of the way the industry has changed where theatrical, while a huge deal, isn’t the end all be all; Akira movies can have a long shelf life on DVD, pay per view and digital download. There are more places to put content, now it’s about having all the content you need.
* 🙁