Editorials > Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Split into Two Films

There were rumors of this happening a few months ago, but now it's official. The adaptation of the seventh (and thus-far final) book in the Harry Potter series will be split into two separate films with release dates six months apart. The LATimes reports that they will be called, intuitively, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. The release dates are set for November 2010 and May 2011, respectively.

The Times also reports that Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince director David Yates will finish up the series by directing both parts of the final adaptation. Steve Kloves will write the screenplay, as he did for all of the other films except Order of the Phoenix.

The rest of the Times' article is mostly full of quotes from actors and executives who emphatically deny that the reason for the split was primarily financial. "I swear to you it was born out of purely creative reasons," producer David Heyman said. "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."

This may be true. The seventh book is so chock full of conflicts and resolutions that it'd take one very long movie to satisfactorily wrap it all up. But also, numbers don't lie. Two movies means twice the money. What half-competent producer would turn that down?

-David Morgan