by Eol » Wednesday 2 June 2004 11:02:31pm
The problem with the GoF is that the Dursley scene is the easiest one to leave on the cutting room floor. Almost everything else in the book, as long as it was, seemed to move the plot forward. It will be disappointing not to see the chaos in the Dursley's living room but its a decent sacrifice to keep other scenes in.
The idea of splitting GoF into two films comes upon the problem of when to stop the story in the first half. There needs to be a big enough climax to make the audiences come back to see the second film. It also needs to be at a point in the story where there will be enough of a plot left for the second half to hold its own.
They could take the Lord of the Rings path and have a super extended edition DVD after showing a clipped version of the story. That worked out well for Peter Jackson.
I don't think that this problem will occur when filming the OoP, because there is a lot (unless they recurr in the 6th and 7th books) that doesn't move the story forward. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the attention to detail of it because it let me get completely immersed in the Potterverse but in a movie, it wouldn't have the same effect.