Because of The Dark Knight’s success last year Warner Bros. decided that they’d made enough money for one year and pushed Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince back to this summer. However, it wasn’t just the fans who were disappointed with the decision. It took director David Yates a while to warm to the situation, as he told the L.A Times recently:
At the time, I was so adrenalized, I was so caught up in the process of getting the film in on deadline and making the movie on a certain schedule, and then the decision to delay was a huge anticlimax. There was a huge sense of disappointment, I must say. We finished the film a year ago, so it’s very strange to go all this time without seeing it with an audience, which is what you make it for. But the studio made their case for the move and I came to understand and appreciate their reasons and they are very good at delivering these movies and understanding the process of making a film successful and I think it wise to defer to their judgment.”
“You find yourself fiddling with it much more in post-production, naturally. There’s a good and bad to that. You could keep adjusting things for the rest of your life if you allowed yourself to do that. That can be unhealthy and at some point you have to say, ‘Here is the cut-off date.’ I know fans are eager to see it and it’s been interesting for us to come back to it now, even as we are busy filming the next installments.”
The interview took place during a break from filming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, which will be split into two films. Yates revealed what they are currently filming and gave us an idea where the film will eventually be sliced.
“We’re here in the forest, we’ve just finished the scene where Harry, Hermione and Ron are captured by the Snatchers after being chased through the woods. The Snatchers are brutal and scary but they aren’t the most intelligent of creatures.They’re trying to figure out exactly who it is they’ve caught.”
“Things can change when you edit, of course, but the idea now is that it will be not long after the sequence that we are filming here today. That’s what we’re experimenting with. We’ve had three or four different ideas about where to cut off the seventh film. Traditionally, the movies have ended with a death or a bereavement, some sort of passage or arrival. This time we think we will end with more a cliffhanger. Again, though, that’s the thought as of this moment.”
As I haven’t read the books this means nothing to me (i’ve just watched the films), but i’m sure true Potter fans will know what this cliffhanger may be. Yates also praised Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint for being so ’stable and level-headed’. Deep down society expects young child actors who earn millions and find fame to end up doing hard drugs and become paparazzi fodder. Thankfully for the Harry Potter franchise these actors have grown up to become sensible and generally cool people (not that I know them, i’m just assuming).
When July rolls in it will have been 2 years since Order of the Phoenix, so expect Potter riots during the opening weekend, and maybe a few deaths.
