Newell had the makings of a provocative new Potter. Then, a month into preproduction, Cuarón invited him over to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. ''As I watched his film, I realized, to my horror, that he had done everything I had planned to do,'' says Newell. ''Darker tone. Sharper edge. The kids were more untidy and rougher and 'realer' and so on.… I had thought, 'Number 3 will be roughly the same as the ones before it.' It wasn't. I had to come up with something else.''

Newell's solution was to zero in on Harry's increasing inability to count on friends, adults, and Dumbledore to bail him out of jams. The only problem with this narrow approach is that it left out the billion other things that made the book so special. Rowling's dense, complex plot concerns Harry's life-changing participation in the Triwizard Tournament, a dangerous triathlon involving three schools. Weaving in and out of this story line are several subplots: an outing to the Quidditch World Cup; the reemergence of the Death Eaters, Voldemort's Muggle-hating followers; and the efforts of a radicalized Hermione (Emma Watson) to liberate Hogwarts' indentured house-elves. At one point, Warner Bros. considered splitting Goblet into two films, but abandoned the idea because the book didn't offer a natural breaking point. ''It's fiendishly intricate. It resists adaptation,'' says Kloves. ''Far and away the hardest one yet to crack.''