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With Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince debuting in just a few days, filmmakers and stars have already started ramping up expectations for the series' two-part finale. At a New York press conference, director David Yates revealed that shooting for the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is roughly 85% complete, and since the movies are being shot in tandem, about 10% of the shooting for the second part has been done as well.
The two parts are going to be quite different though, the director explained:
The first movie is a road movie basically, and it's quite intense and very raw and we're way away from Hogwarts, and it's a bit like three refugees being pursued across the landscape by these terrible Death Eaters. We're really enjoying it actually. It feels very different. ... The first one is very verité and documentary and edgy and on the road, and the second part is a big opera basically, a great big epic with huge battles and very oddly moving, because it concludes the whole saga really. So they're two very different films.
Not only will they be different from each other, but a big change from what came before as well, according to Daniel Radcliffe:
I'm so excited about the seventh film. I don't know if anybody else had the same experience as me over the last couple of days, but seeing the sixth film again, it does suddenly strike me that we are doing something very, very different with the seventh film.
As to the precise details of the movies, where part one will end, and exactly what the movies will and will not include, filmmakers were a bit more circumspect. And some key issues haven't been resolved yet.
Different ideas for how to do the final scene, in which the characters 19 years later are sending their own children off to Hogwarts are still being explored. "Probably not Benjamin Button technology," Yates says. But producer David Heyman adds, "We're going to do everything we can and it will be Dan, Rupert and Emma in those parts, not some other actors."
Posted 07.11.09 by reelz -
Against precedent, the Harry Potter film franchise has managed to keep fans of the wildly popular novel series by J.K. Rowling content, despite the many editorial necessities inherent in scaling down the lengthy books into movie-sized installments. Though actor Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry in the series, is on the record complaining that the latest film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, isn't "dark" enough for him, Radcliffe said that the tonal switch is essential to the overall arc of the films:
I don't think we're holding back, I'm giving my all on the set as I've been brought up to do. But it's true that this is very much a lead-in to the seventh installment, it's setting up the final events, and that's why it might be a harder film to come to grips with. So that's why there are moments where we can be freer, we can have more jokes and a bit more fun with it. You don't always have to think about an immediate danger. Voldemort's not the main source of fear or evil; that's another character.
The decision to cut the seventh and final movie into two installments may have been prompted by financial considerations, but Radcliffe says that it was essential in order to honor the original story:
I'm very happy that the seventh book is being made as two films because I was worried they would have to cut important scenes.... The problem with doing that with the final book is that there is nothing that doesn't relate to the main story or drive it forward. There's not much you could cut. So we've given ourselves the room and opportunity to do it justice.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince also stars Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and Michael Gambon as Albus Dumbledore.
Posted 07.04.09 by BrentJS -
It seems like professional suicide to step away from a successful acting career to attend college, but that's exactly what Emma Watson plans to do following the conclusion of her Harry Potter duties. Watson hasn't revealed which university she plans on attending, but in an interview with Teen Vogue, she said:
There's not, like, a burning passion in me that I have to act and I don't care what I do. Until something comes along that I feel as strongly about as I did Hermione – like, I felt that it was life or death – I don't want to act again.
Watson said that she will study English Literature and that she wants to be just like every other student, even sharing a dorm room:
I probably sound like a paranoid nut, but I'm doing this because I want to be normal. I really want anonymity.
Watson is currently promoting the sixth film in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and is currently filming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which will be split into two films. She reprises the role of Hermione Granger, which she has been playing for nearly half of her life, alongside Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter and Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley.
Posted 06.29.09 by BrentJS -
Jamie Campbell Bower, the young British actor currently playing Volturi member Caius in The Twilight Saga: New Moon, has been confirmed to star in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. He's set to play dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, childhood best friend to Albus Dumbledore, in the final installments of the franchise.
The Deathly Hallows movies are due for release in 2010 and 2011, with the former currently shooting in Wales, England. Bower isn't the only Twilight actor to star in both rival movies. He now joins fellow Brit Robert Pattinson, who was seen in 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Here's hoping vampire and wizard fans will play nice with each other -- we'd hate for a franchise war to break out.
Posted 05.15.09 by reelz -
Fans and paparazzi are crowding the windswept beachfront in Wales where Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been filming this week. The life-size version of the magical Shell Cottage created among the dunes is proving quite a draw for spectators.
Another big draw was the funeral for the house elf Dobby, who falls victim to Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter). The Daily Mail has a good selection of photos from the scene.
Posted 05.13.09 by reelz -
Although fans still have to wait until July 15 for the long-delayed release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, filming for the two-part follow-up is already in full swing. Pictures and video from the London filming of Deathly Hallows -- including an action shot of Hermione (Emma Watson) and her magical handbag -- are starting to make their way on line.
The decision on how to divide the movie has been made, as well. The split will come, Daniel Radcliffe tells Empire, "at a very tense cliffhanger." Where, exactly, he doesn't say. But producer David Heyman clearly wants to keep fans guessing, adding that it is not the first place the filmmakers considered but "a place that we think is very exciting, and I think quite bold, in that it's not necessarily where one might expect."
Posted 04.21.09 by reelz -
Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter) recently extended a personal invitation to President Barack Obama's daughters Malia and Sasha to visit the The Deathly Hallows set when filming begins next month. In fact, he even volunteered to be their personal tour guide.
But the president may want to rethink that invitation after yesterday's preproduction events. Harry Potter's stunt double was hospitalized with severe back injuries after "a planned blast somehow went wrong" during the rehearsal of an ariel sequence, sending the 25-year-old man crashing to the ground. Radcliffe and his co-stars Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were not on the set at the time.
Posted 01.29.09 by reelz -
Warner Bros. has confirmed that the film adaptation of final book in the Harry Potter series will indeed be broken out into two installments for the big screen. As we reported earlier, rumors to the effect have been swarming for months.
The first installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, will come out for the 2010 holidays and Harry Potter and the Dealthy Hallows: Part 2 will come to theaters in May 2011.
Says Potter producer David Heyman: "The Deathly Hallows is so rich, the story so dense and there is so much that is resolved that after discussing it with [J.K. Rowling], we came to the conclusion that two parts were needed to do it justice."
Both installments will be directed by David Yates (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince) and adapted by Steve Kloves, who has done several of the previous Potter adaptations.
Posted 03.13.08 by reelz -
An interesting turn has happened in the plans for the final Harry Potter book to movie adaptation - it's being broken up into two movies. Yes, they're going to pull a Kill Bill on us for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, releasing it in two halves.
The word is that because the book itself is so long (nearly 800 pages), they will break it out into two halves of the movie so they don't have to skip great chunks of the story. I'm sure the extra box office it will rake in can't hurt, either. In the meantime, the sixth installment of the series - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - is under way.
Source: The Mail on Sunday
Posted 01.14.08 by reelz