Friday, March 14, 2008

David Heyman Talks Split, Both Films Around 2 1/2 Hours Long

Empire magazine has a new interview with producer David Heyman on the recent news that Deathly Hallows will be split into two films.

Did you get as far as trying to put a script together that would get everything in to one film, or did it become obvious in discussions that it would work?

No, it all came down to discussions. We just thought how are we going to approach this? Is this going to be a four and a half hour film? That’s probably what it would have been. Would our audience really embrace that? In some way, I think they might. But I think the younger ones would have drifted. There’s always been difficulty making sure that the ones that are two hours, two and a half hours long – making sure that those are the right length. I think by having two films that are two and a half hours – although we’re not sure of the length – then it will be a richer experience. One of the challenges that faces us, which we’ve been discussing, is how to give each film its own identity. We want them to feel like one film, but they’ve got to be self-contained too. We feel now that we’ve got a really good angle on that. But we haven’t got a script yet on either part, so I don’t want to say too much.

So these films will be the same length as the ones that came before? We won’t see two films that clock in under two hours?

No. The idea is to get everything people want in there. I’m sure there’ll be parts that don’t make it, which we won’t know until the script is written. But that is the idea.

What do you think is the natural separation point in the books? Where can you end the first film in a satisfying way?

It depends what feeling you want [to end on]. I don’t want to answer that just yet because we don’t have the first script. We do have a point roughly where we want to end, but we haven’t got a draft to know if that works yet.


The interview goes on the provide further insight how we should expect things to proceed in the next few years, including that the filming for both parts will occur at the same time. I highly recommend reading the entire interview here.

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