[HPFGU-Movie] RE: Scheduling GoF

[GulPlum]

This is also an attempt at commenting on Sohpia's post...

At 15:37 13/02/03 , Steve Binch wrote:
>I was thinking about GoF and if they made it two movies. Wouldn't it be
>great to have part 1 for summer 2005 and part 2 for Christmas 2005? That is
>what they are doing this year with The Matrix sequels. I hope it is
>successful for The Matrix, so that WB will have confidance in the 6 month
>apart schedualing.

Much as I'd like to see as much of the book filmed as possible, the concept 
of having it made as two separate movies released six months apart leaves 
me entirely unimpressed.

This is *not* the same situation as the Matrix sequels (each of which 
apparently is meant to work as a standalone movie) or the existing example 
of this scheme having been done (and worked) before, namely the two Back To 
The future sequels.

It's not even the same situation as the LOTR trilogy which is simply one 
single 9-hour movie in three parts (I disagree with the idea of releasing 
it over a period of three years, even though the box office for TTT seems 
to show that it's working).

GoF is a "sequel" of kinds in itself and doing it in two parts cheapens it 
somewhat. Furthermore, assuming that it's made as two movies and that "part 
one" ends at the logical and almost mathematical half-way point in the 
story, namely after the First Task, it would leave both movies completely 
unbalanced dramatically, not to mention that they would each have a very 
different tone.

I cannot express how disappointed I am at Columbus's announcement that 
Steve Kloves was being approached to write the script. There are lots of 
things about the book I dislike and the plotting could be tightened up 
tremendously if they could find a screenwriter with a little more 
self-confidence, who is less likely to stick slavishly to JKR's poor 
plotting but willing to keep her characterisation (on the basis of the 
first two movies, and especially CoS, Kloves appears to be doing exactly 
the opposite).

Ever since I read the books (which wasn't until after the first movie came 
out) I've maintained that the books would have transferred much better as a 
seven-season TV series (one season per book) than as stand-alone movies. 
This could have made a virtue of the books' episodic nature rather than 
showing it up as a recurring downside of the two movies to date. A better 
screenwriter than Kloves may have pulled off a cinematic transfer with some 
true *adaptation* rather than just condensing scenes or removing them 
altogether. He's done a poor job to date and as *at least half* of GoF will 
have to be excised to enable it to be made as a single movie, I simply 
don't trust him to do a good job.

Under the circumstances, I trust him even less to produce screenplays for 
two movies which look like anything more than a single movie split in half, 
or rather several episodes of a TV series strung together.

I'm not saying that I know the solutions or that I know how to pull it off, 
but then nobody's offering to pay me a small fortune to attempt it. 
Spending it on Kloves (with Columbus standing behind his back as producer) 
is IMO a huge waste.

I'm not entirely sure to what extent the poor adaptation of the first two 
books is down to Kloves's poor script or Columbus's poor direction (I 
suspect it's a mixture of the two). I'll wait to see what Cuaron makes 
based on Kloves's PoA script before I decide who is more to blame.