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After reading this story on AICN, I was squirming in my seat, searching for more info. It seems that the big bosses over at Warner Brothers have realised that, while a single film was fine for the likes of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the way the books doubled and tripled in size (Order of the Phoenix for example, that thing is the size of the Bible!) means that fitting the entire plot of a giant sized Potter book into a single film will incite fans to mayhem and riots. So, for the seventh and final film in the septology (7 books, that looks like it should mean seven parts, right?) the studios are debating the release of a parts 1 and 2 to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a move that will at least double their box office takings for the final book’s adaptation.

While the final book is by no means the longest (that award goes to Order of the Phoenix) in the series, the events of book 7 are quite heavy going, with the war between Voldemort and the forces of good well underway, and with the good guys heavily outnumbered. Not only are there huge battle scenes to worry about (for example the ultimate battle; Harry vs Voldemort), there are also scenes with just Harry, Hermione and Ron which form a good deal of the story, which really show what each character is going through. If the book is filmed in a single issue, no director will give part of his/her less than 180 mins of screen time to showing this segment of the book in depth, but will skim through it in an effort to get to the far grander special effects shots, yet this is the heart of the book and deserves to be shown. After a good (but not great) effort on Order of the Phoenix, expectations are higher and with the final book being the only this Harry fans have now that the last word has been written by JK herself, all eyes will be firmly upon the movie screen to see what the directors make of books 6 and 7 (Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows).

Speaking of book 6′s adaptation, the Mail on Sunday claims that the crew currently working on Half Blood Prince have been informed that number 7 will be a game of two halves, so while we have no official announcement, until the WB say otherwise, I choose to believe that there’ll be a whole lot more Harry to come.

Talking Points: What do you think? Should they split the final book into 2 films?