MOVIE: NEWS: Book three script and TWO book four movies?

[Cindy C.]

No: HPFGUIDX 28166

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., MMMfanfic at h... wrote:
> 
> The Bagman plot was just plain annoying, which was the reason I 
argue 
> for its elimination.

<snip>

> 
> Two movies is possible -- the good place to make the chop would be 
> just after the Pensieve when Dumbledore said 'Good luck with The 
> Third Task.'  That would be a cliffhanger as we go into the 
> intermission and there would still be at least 250 pages to go.  
> Running time would be about four and a half hours altogether -- may 
> even be longer than Lawrence of Arabia or Apocalypse now (the redux 
> version).

I'm still noodling this "two movies will work" theory out.  If we're 
talking about a feature length film that people are supposed to pay 
good money to see, it absolutely has to have a climax (doesn't it?).  
The second half is easy -- do it as written.  But where's the climax 
in the first half, i.e. Movie No. 1?  QWC surely won't work, as it is 
too early and not really Harry-centered.

Heck, I'm not sure that there are two climaxes in GoF.  There's the 
graveyard escape, and there's the escape from Crouch/Moody, and there 
is each task.  Maybe the way to pull two movies out of GoF is to re-
arrange the events in some fashion.  Like, the Pensieve could come a 
lot sooner in the book, couldn't it?  So could the Dream, maybe?

Or they might have some screenwriter "add" some big climax to Movie 
No. 1.  But I'd hate to see them add something to GoF just to give it 
a standard-issue Hollywood climax.  (The possibilities are just 
hideous.  Like Harry gets injured in the second task, and everyone 
crowds around his bedside, and he just pulls through at the end of 
Movie 1.  Oh, man.  That's awful.).  What we need is for someone (Amy 
Z, are you there?) to do a fabulous essay of all of the plotlines in 
GoF.

I guess I'm willing to be persuaded on the two-movies idea, but I'm 
still leaning toward one, bare-bones movie.  You're right that if you 
take out everything that isn't central to the main plot line, you 
save a lot of pages, but you lose gems like The Egg and the Eye, 
which is one of the most clever chapters in the series, IMHO.  That 
would really hurt.

You guys have interesting ideas, that's for sure.

Cindy (who wasn't bothered by the Bagman subplot because Bagman is a 
hideously evil Death Eater who knew all about the plot to restore 
Voldemort to power, and who will see Barb's skrewt edits and raise 
her one Winky)