Ever since Jaws, the profits of the big studios have been lead by the blockbusters. If a film becomes a runaway success, that can make the fortunes of executives and shareholders alike. As a result, studios put a lot of time and effort into chasing that elusive Next Big Thing. When they get it, they want to exploit it for all it's worth, which means merchandise, computer game tie-ins, special edition DVDs and all sorts. After that comes the sequels.But what if there is no room for a sequel? What with the current fashion being to keep films as close to the books as possible, you have a pre-set limit on the number of films you can make if the author states they are not making any more or, even worse, if they're dead.
The answer, of course, was provided by Quentin Tarantino with his Kill Bill films. While by no means the first to piggyback production for a series of films, this was the first time it was pitched at the popcorn-munchers without the cushion of having a successful initial instalment (e.g. The Matrix, Back to the Future) or a pre-existing fanbase (Lord of the Rings), yet it still worked. You produce two films instead of one and if anyone goes to see the first, it's a given they'll see the second. If you get a decent audience, that means nearly double the profits. New Line are doing it with The Hobbit (now that they and Peter Jackson are friends again), so it should come as no surprise that Warner Brothers are following suit with the seventh and final Harry Potter book.
The Hobbit I can maybe give them a pass on because done well, there is easily enough material in there to fill out between four and six hours and Peter Jackson has already proven himself more than capable. The Deathly Hallows on the other hand... Daniel Radcliffe said in an interview that chopping the minor subplots out of the books was unpopular with the fans and in the case of the seventh book, they were integral to the story. I don't agree there. Personally I thought that there was a lot of dead weight in that book, which while knitted into the story reasonably well, are not really a vital part of it. Especially seeing as they dropped a lot of the buildup to them in some of the previous films.
Okay, so they will be able to avoid a lot of the horrible pacing problems that the needlessly convoluted plot of the forth book caused and I'm probably going to see them anyway, whatever happens. My big worry is where do you draw the line between the two halves? The best bits of the book are contained within the first and the last quarters, with the bit in the middle having Harry and Hermione wander completely aimlessly around the country, only stopping to reveal a bit of the piecemeal backstory here and there. I remain to be convinced that it wouldn't be better just having it as one big, epic, finale that they charged a little extra for and gave you a toilet break in the middle. But I guess we'll see.
As an aside, they've just greenlit another attempt at resurrecting the Carry On franchise. Even if they managed to pull off something funny (as opposed to Carry on Columbus), I don't see how they can ever capture the spirit of the original, what with Sid James, Joan Sims, Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey (basically all the classic actors except Barbara Windsor) all being dead. Still, they could conceivably pull of a Russell T. Davies and propel it into an entirely new phase, but what with the way the film industry works nowadays, even if it does prove successful, keeping hold of a core cast for any length of time without people demanding silly wages will be extremely difficult. Again, I guess we'll see.
