Daniel Radcliffe on the Two 'Deathly Hallows' Films

The Harry Potter series will reach its conclusion a few years from now. If all goes according to plan, Daniel Radcliffe, who was 11 when filming commenced on the first film, will be 23 the week after the last movie opens. That movie is, of course, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II, after the producers came up with the ingenious (and profitable) idea to split the 750-page J.K. Rowling book into two parts rather than try to squeeze all of that info into two-and-a-half hours. The problem is, where do you stop the first movie and begin the second? Unlike TV, which can end a season with a melodramatic cliffhanger, it's very unusual for films to complete without resolution. That defies three-act structure, and even though we know there will be another movie to fill in the blanks, open-ended movies are rare and usually disastrous. So there has to be some kind of story conclusion in the seventh of eight movies for it to be considered anything but a bridge. Daniel Radcliffe and producer David Heyman talked about that very thing when they sat down for a Half-Blood Prince interview with Empire. Heyman said, "We've played around with a couple of places and ultimately settled on a place that we think is very exciting, and I think quite bold, in that it's not necessarily where one might expect." "You want to give a sense of completion, on one hand, but a sense that there's another piece, more to come." Added the producer, "We tried one and then Steve (Kloves, screenwriter) came up with the idea to try it another way and when we tried that, it felt just right." Radcliffe promised that Deathly Hallows: Part I, due in November 2010, will end "at a very tense cliffhanger." So it seems like everyone involved knows not to leave its audience in a lurch. Characters have to find resolution; even though this is part of a greater series, as its own entity, it still must have some kind of beginning, middle, and end. Oh, and Radcliffe talked a bit more about adapting the final pages of Deathly Hallows, but I won't bring it up here in case you hate spoilers. If you do want to hear his thoughts on that, check out Empire.

Comments

[lisa]

harry potter should never end. it should go on forever and i want to see harry when hes like 40. twilight on the other hand...

[orinn]

I am so going to hate the unavoidable movies they make after they no longer have book material to work from. This series just makes to much money for them to not want to keep making them until they dont.