Now that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is upon us, the focus will slowly begin to shift toward Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — the final book in the series which is being turned into two movies. The pair of films will take the smart path and are filming right now, immediately after Half-Blood Prince so they don’t lose any more time or youthful looking actors. One of the big questions that has plagued fans since learning of the two-part finale is of course where do they stop the first part to cut them into two? Well, it seems they have a good idea where they want to slice it.
First off, producer David Heyman and star Daniel Radcliffe spoke to Empire, where Radcliffe claimed that the split would occur at a major cliffhanger. Heyman added:
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. 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.
Now, to avoid any spoilers, it has not been confirmed where the break will take place, but director David Yates spoke to the LA Times and confirmed what Radcliffe said above: cliffhanger.
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.
He then went on to be a little bit more specific, saying it’s probably around “where Harry, Hermione and Ron are captured by the Snatchers after being chased through the woods,” which means that there’s probably something big that happens in this sequence where they will stop. You may or may not know exactly what their plan is, but again we’ll keep it spoiler-free on here for now.
It should be interesting to see how it all works out, but for now, those are the future. The now is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince finally coming out on July 15, 2009.
