It's official - Harry Potter 7 will be two films

[BLU for Blue]

After months of rumors, Warner Bros. and the producers of the massively successful movies will announce Thursday that they plan to split Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling's seventh and final "Potter" novel, into two blockbuster films -- one to be released in November 2010 and the second in May 2011, says the Los Angeles Times.

The films will be titled, simply, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II, according to producer David Heyman. Director David Yates, who returned for his second tour of Potter duty with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and is quite popular with the cast, will direct both "Deathly Hallows" films, which will be filmed concurrently. Screenwriter Steve Kloves also returns and, by completion of the franchise, will have written seven of the eight films.

Some cynics will see the move as simply doubling the box-office payday, but Radcliffe told the newspaper that the split is purely in service of the story.

Heyman said he approached Rowling with some trepidation about the strategy but found that she signed off on its logic rather quickly. "I went to Jo and she was cool with it," Heyman said, "and that was quite a relief."

Heyman said now that the "Potter" team knows they can split "Deathly Hollows" in half, the next challenge is figuring out the division.

As Heyman put it: "The question will be, where do you break it? And how do you make them one but two separate and distinct stories? Do you break it with a moment of suspense or one of resolution? These are the interesting challenges. But each book has presented its challenges."

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