27 responses so far ↓

• 1 reyhan // Mar 12, 2008 at 8:20 pm

  From the article:

  ‘”I swear to you it was born out of purely creative reasons,” Heyman said’

  I swear to you it was not.

• 2 reyhan // Mar 12, 2008 at 11:43 pm

  Let’s do some math.

  The lowest paying HP movie (PoA) made $540 million dollars. The highest paying one (SS) made $651. OotP made $645. At a conservative estimate, the next Harry Potter movie will make $500 million dollars. Probably more.

  The next two Harry Potter movies will make $1 billion dollars. Probably more.

  So imagine you’re a producer and your job is to make profitable movies.

  What would you rather make: $500K? or $1 Billion?

  See what I mean?

• 3 korg20000bc // Mar 13, 2008 at 4:20 am

  This is junk.

  Why would they now be concerned with cutting large parts of the story when its been happening all along. Must think we’re dunderheads.

  As you say, reyhan, its all about the moolah. This really get up my goat.

  Matthew

• 4 Travis Prinzi // Mar 13, 2008 at 7:48 am

  There is one - and only one - positive to all this. Those of us with blogs and books will be able to ride the HP hype one last time, increasing site traffic and book sales.

  See how influential money can be?

  You’re right, Matthew. They must think we’re idiots.

• 5 Dave the Longwinded // Mar 13, 2008 at 9:56 am

  Yes, it’s all about money — but we’ve known that for a while. The films have been marketed as major blockbusters since the first one exceeded expectations. And, yes, the producers and anyone involved are going to be either disengenuous about it, or flatly naive.

  My only real complaint with this on its surface is the scheduled six month buffer between Part I and Part II. I know they want to milk as much out of Part I as possible, but six months!?! One can’t be a Thanksgiving release (in the US) while the other is a Christmas release?

• 6 Travis Prinzi // Mar 13, 2008 at 10:03 am

  My only real complaint with this on its surface is the scheduled six month buffer between Part I and Part II. I know they want to milk as much out of Part I as possible, but six months!?! One can’t be a Thanksgiving release (in the US) while the other is a Christmas release?

  Once again, money. That gives them time to make a full run with the first movie in theaters AND get the DVD just before the second part is released.

  They wanted to do the movie in conjunction with the opening of the Universal Studios HP park, so my guess is installment #1 will be a late Spring/early summer release, with a Christmas release of the first movie’s DVD and the second movie to theaters.

• 7 Travis Prinzi // Mar 13, 2008 at 10:04 am

  And by “Christmas release” I mean “About a month before Christmas for the DVD, and maybe Christmas day or a week prior for film #2.”

• 8 revgeorge // Mar 13, 2008 at 11:22 am

  Well, at least maybe they’ll avoid the errors of the other big fantasy movie franchise. All along the Potter movies have been good at least in not cutting out really important stuff & not adding in stuff that was never in the story in the first place. Are you listening Peter Jackson?

  Well, we’ll see how this scene in HBP plays out, wherein they’ve put in something not in the books but is in line with the tenor of what’s going on.

• 9 seajay // Mar 13, 2008 at 5:23 pm

  I agree and disagree with all of you in equal measure!

  Yes money is important; WB are not a charitable institution seeking to do good works. And this time I think they have Oscar in their sights.

  Added to that, a significant portion of fans want to see more of the book action in the films.

  Either way it is necessary to make either an over three hour film or two 2 hour plus films.

  Deathly Hallows brings all the elements from the previous books together in a complex way. I think WB want to make this last one - one for the history books.

  My guess is that they want to invest big time sfx that have not been tried before and they need a lot of time to do that. The main shooting, commencing February 2009 will be over by say August 2009. The sfx will take a lot longer than on previous films.

  We will visit the Dursleys for one last time and Malfoy Manor, enter Gringotts with Hermione/Bellatrix, visit the Ministry of Magic, Godrics Hollow and Hogwarts of course. We will ride on a dragon and learn of Grindevold and of Snape’s tragic tale. There will be a wedding and a walk in the forest. Dobby, Griphook and Ollivander will need to be properly reintroduced and Kreacher’s tragic story told, and then Dobby’s noble death, the underground Dumbledore’s Army, maybe the Chamber of Secrets and fiendfire. What seems like Kings Cross station will materialise and a very revealing conversation with Dumbledore will take place. A massive battle will ensue and not all of our old friends will survive. How could one film be expected to achieve this?

• 10 Travis Prinzi // Mar 13, 2008 at 6:59 pm

  seajay, on the one hand, you’re correct: there’s a lot of final stuff to wrap up, and they may have some catching up to do even, given how much they’ve left out of the first 5 (and likely 6) movies. Good points about shooting for an oscar as well.

  On the other hand, you write: Either way it is necessary to make either an over three hour film or two 2 hour plus films.

  This was equally true of GoF, Order, and HBP, and they managed to put out 2.5 hour films for both.

  So, I suppose I agree and disagree with you in equal measure as well

• 11 HogwartsProfessor.com » Blog Archive » Hallows Movie in Two Parts: Where to Divide? // Mar 13, 2008 at 7:09 pm

  [...] another gloss on a Hog’s Head post: the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows film will be two separate [...]

• 12 Eeyore // Mar 14, 2008 at 1:25 am

  Yes, they managed to cut all the previous (and probably current) movies down to 2 and a half hours or less, but honestly, they shouldn’t have done. POA should have been just ten minutes longer as well to give Dumbledlore and Sirius (who was left out of that bit) time to talk with Harry at the end.

  So, while I’m not buying they comment that it isn’t about the money, I’m glad they won’t be hacking away at the story of the last book trying to make it into a 2+ hour movie.

  Pat

• 13 Jeremy Pierce // Mar 14, 2008 at 3:17 am

  The only movies so far that I think captured the books well were the first two. They began cutting out crucial things with Azkaban, and it seriously hurt the story-telling. It was very hard to follow what was going on during the first watch if you hadn’t read the book. The fourth one wasn’t as bad in that way, but some of the most interesting and important parts were skirted over or ignored completely. The fifth was a complete travesty, removing very large and important scenes that were absolutely necessary to explain some very basic story elements.

  So I don’t care what their motivation is. I’m glad they’ve wised up, and I really can’t see any negatives at all. The only negative anyone has mentioned is motivation, and I can’t see how that will hurt the final product even if they’re lying through their teeth and all of your readings of their motivations are correct.

  So I don’t see what’s justifying the “I don’t like this” chorus. They’re giving twice as much time to do this one right and not make the mistakes they made for the 3rd through 5th films (#6 will probably be less bad because of the shortness of the book), and you people are actually complaining? I appreciate it very, very much and wish they had thought of this for some of the earlier ones.

• 14 Westel // Mar 14, 2008 at 8:58 am

  My main complaint, as outlined in more detail on the Hogwarts Professor blog, is that the actors are frankly getting too old to convincingly portray the characters. The longer they wait to finish this franchise, the worse it’s going to get.

• 15 revgeorge // Mar 14, 2008 at 9:34 am

  They’ll have to have the last three movies be a little longer to include all the stuff they’ve left out about Snape. He’s almost completely ignored in GOF. In OOTP we get no mention of Lily in his worst memory scene & we never see him involved in the Order & working as a spy in LV’s camp.

  I agree with Jeremy. The first two movies, despite everyone’s complaints about them being too wooden, at least give us information we need. Snape in them is more accurately portrayed. It’s still good in POA, but after that not so good.

• 16 Travis Prinzi // Mar 14, 2008 at 10:31 am

  Jeremy, the problem is with your statement “do this one right,” in my opinion. Why is putting the book straight on the screen the only “right” way to do it? Your assumption seems to be that the “purist” way of thinking is the only “right” way of thinking…and after decades and decades of movies derived from books, I think it’s evident by now that a movie is manifestly not the book and doesn’t need to be.

  I don’t want to see the books go straight to screen; I very much prefer the directors who know they’re making movies and not just treating the book as though it were a screenplay.

  Let the movies be movies and not books-on-screen.

• 17 revgeorge // Mar 14, 2008 at 11:10 am

  Travis,

  Agree with your comments on movies being movies & books being books. It’s just when the movies go & change things that don’t need to be changed, add in things that make absolutely no sense & speak against the plot of the books, & then leave out vital information in their quest to be visionary that I have a problem with them.

  I think they have to do more background explanation with Snape in HBP or else it’s going to seem pretty incongruent when Snape blasts DD off the astronomy tower after Snape’s been used mainly for comic relief the last two movies. Maybe they’ll have Rickman hit Gambon on the back of the head with a book & that’ll knock him off the tower.

• 18 reyhan // Mar 14, 2008 at 8:36 pm

  I love HP and enjoy the movies very much. But.

  More is not always a good thing. Look at LOTR. Did we really need endless shots of Arwen riding to Aragorn’s rescue? Didn’t Frodo agonizing over his heavy burder get a little tedious? Weren’t there a few too many CGI battle scenes? Didn’t it drag just a wee bit?

  Also, I think that people who are celebrating two movies for DH are making an assumption: that the time will be spent on the plot details they want to see. More could mean dwelling endlessly on battle scenes (I can see that the battle at Gringotts and the battle of Hogwarts are going to be drawn out in excrutiating detail.) More could mean the camera watching Harry and Ron agonizing over their conflicts and decisions. Nothing wrong with that, but the action lovers aren’t going to like it. And frankly, neither appears to be a fine enough actor to hold the camera’s interest for extended period of time. And worst case scenario: what if they start introducing stuff which wasn’t originally there. The Dumbledore-Ariana-Grindelwald back story is especially open to that possibility. Will they still be checking with JKR to make sure it’s congruent with the canon?

  And along the same lines:

  All along the directors and scripwriters have been following the guideline of cutting stuff out so that the movies would fit a reasonable time frame. Now they’re going to be told to stretch it out? Who works like that? Directors make long movies because they have a lot of footage which they don’t want to leave out. In this case Yates is going to be told to film more stuff to fill in the time?

  Look at the previous movies: SS: 152 minutes. CoS: 161 minutes. PoA: 141 minutes. GoF: 157 minutes. And OotP clocking in at an amazing 138 minutes. Average run time: 149 minutes

  And DH is going to require 300+ minutes?

  Sometimes less is more. In this case, I fear that more is going to be way too much.

• 19 Michael // Mar 15, 2008 at 12:24 pm

  Of course it is all about the money. The fact that they even did the movies in the first place, was all about the money. Had they wanted to stay true to the books entirely they would have chosen a different medium to to the story in or actually give us GOOD MOVIES. But they did not.

  I have never seen the movies as anything of importance. It has gotten some great British actors some mainstream roles and publicity but otherwise they are just two hours if mindless fun. Nothing more. If I want a true Potter fix, I’ll read my books thanks.

  So it does not surprise me that they have made this movie into two. What does surprise me is that they haven’t done it sooner.

• 20 seajay // Mar 15, 2008 at 6:48 pm

  I do not feel cynical about there being two films. I take it for granted that film studios are required to maximise their potential profits - it is a fact of life. And as most films make a loss, you could say that studios are not all that good at their job!

  The other point for me is that book 7 really does have a lot more plot and a lot more action that simply cannot be cut out. I just do not see how DH could be made into a 150 minute film, remain coherent and bring everything to a proper close.

  If WB make a mess of this and get bad word of mouth on the release of part 1, then few people will go and see the final film. I think there is still some element of risk in the two film strategy.

• 21 Jeremy Pierce // Mar 15, 2008 at 9:05 pm

  I’m not a purist. Some changes are fine. I loved the addition of the rock-throwing in POA. That’s not in the book, but it makes the time-travel sequence that much better. I don’t mind leaving out details here or there that are unimportant to to overall storyline either. What I think is very unfortunate is when they cut things out that explain things they leave in, and they did an awful lot of that in the last three films.

  We have no idea in the movie why Lupin knows that the Marauder’s Map is even a map. We never find out why Snape refuses to believe Sirius, even though in the movie he overhears much more than he does in the book, enough that everyone else in the room is convinced. There’s also nothing about how Sirius managed to get out of Azkaban, just as there isn’t any account of how Barty Jr. does so in GOF (and no mention why everyone is surprised to see him despite his just having broken out of Azkaban, the way the movie presents it).

  There’s no explanation of why Harry shares the information about the dragons with Cedric (in the book it’s because he knew Fleur and Krum knew, but Harry never draws that conclusion in the movie). We’re never told that Dumbledore would never have let anyone die in the Second Task, and so we’re left thinking the whole competition was thoroughly immoral. The movies tell us of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs only in the map, but inexplicably Peter Pettigrew is somehow Wormtail only in the fourth film, and Sirius is Padfoot all of a sudden in the fifth.

  It’s never clear in OOtP that Snape does indeed understand Harry’s statement about Padfoot in Umbridge’s office and that that’s how the Order knows to go to the Ministry. Dumbledore in fact explains very little at the end of that film, and some of what he leaves out is very important. He doesn’t tell Harry that he knows the prophecy. Their way of getting us to hear the prophecy was fine except that we lose stuff that they’ll need to work back in to the next movie. As has already been mentioned, they’ll need to work hard to make up for the loss of the Snape-Lily stuff. They’ll have to make stuff up with Kreacher too because of what they left out with him, and the locket’s going to need to be explained after-the-fact too. Leaving out Mundungus is also going to require some work to get around.

  Leaving out Quidditch is unfortunate but understandable. Leaving out some of this stuff is going to make things very difficult, and leaving out some of it is even unconscionable. This is not an issue of purists vs. those who recognize that a movie can’t have everything in the book. It’s an issue of internal consistency, ensuring what happens in the story has a plausible and noticeable explanation, and looking forward to things that the script writers even know ahead of time but don’t set themselves up for.

• 22 Travis Prinzi // Mar 16, 2008 at 9:31 am

  Does it bother you that Rowling, the one who wrote the stories, approved the scripts?

• 23 reyhan // Mar 16, 2008 at 11:17 am

  Quick comment (because I’ being asked to go play a videogame):

  As Travis has said, movies are different from books. Each movie stands on its own (as books should too, but that’s another debate). A movie doesn’t need to reference itself to other movies to present a plausible, coherent, comprehensible and compelling story. So it really doesn’t matter if details which will be necessary for future movies are left in or out. The only thing I can see is important is that characters who will be necessary for the plot late on not be killed earlier.

  Where I think there could be problems is if they’re making two movies out of DH. Each of those movies will also have to stand by itself, and have its own full story to tell, yet the first will have to set the stage for the next. But we can see examples where the challenge has been (more or lesss) successfully met: Pirates of the Caribbean, LOTR (although Tolkien did the scriptwriters’ work work for them) and Kill Bill.

• 24 revgeorge // Mar 16, 2008 at 4:44 pm

  Ah, Kill Bill. A movie(s) that have kind of grown on me. I don’t normally go in for Tarantino’s stuff but he did good on that film series.

• 25 Victoria // Mar 17, 2008 at 11:00 am

  Interesting the you mention LOTR, reyhan. I personally found Two Towers immensely ungratifying to watch. When I came out of the theater I really thought: ‘Well, what was to be expected with an in-between film.’

  I am afraid this will also happen with the DHP1. Although I can see several point where they might cut off, the beginning that could be left might just be a miserable attempt at an interesting, coherent and stimulating film.

• 26 Black Angus // Mar 18, 2008 at 7:28 pm

  This news means we can spend an hour or so bumbling around the forests with Harry, Ron and Hermione, listening to them whinge. Maybe they can finish the first instalment with Ron stomping off. Cliffhanger.
  Now would it be strictly adding something if Gambon chooses to mince?

• 27 Jeremy Pierce // Mar 26, 2008 at 9:21 am

  Travis, I’m not sure someone who knows the story as well is going to notice the things I listed. It takes someone encountering it for the first time or someone who is thinking very hard about why certain people do certain things to notice them. They slip because newbies aren’t the ones making the decisions.

  The author knows why she put things in the story, of course, and she might concede to dropping certain things to avoid dropping others. She certainly has tried to prevent them from making things difficult later on by preventing them from removing Kreacher, and she insisted on pointing out that Dumbledore wouldn’t have had a girlfriend, but I doubt she has as much invested in the movies if she’s enthusiastic about every change they made.

  I doubt she is, actually. Approving something might be a concession to some studio demand rather than thinking it’s a good idea. But I imagine she just didn’t pick up on the fact that some famous criminal has escaped from Azkaban with no one worried about it, even thought the previous year one had done so and everyone was scared to death. She probably was thinking as she had in the book, that he was assumed to be dead, and didn’t notice that no one mentioned that in the movie.

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