EW's Complete Coverage
Harry PotterReady, Aim, 'Fire'!
Does being the director of the fourth Harry Potter movie get you an early copy of J.K. Rowling's sixth book? ''Absolutely not,'' laughs Mike Newell with mock bitterness. So much for perks. Instead, the esteemed British helmer of Four Weddings and a Funeral will have to settle for the luster — and pressure — of bringing to screen the shaggy-locked teen wizard's most pivotal adventure yet: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which finally unleashes the dreaded (and, until now, formless) Lord Voldemort and sets the stage for a war that will wage through the end of the series. It was with slight nervousness that Newell (top left with Daniel Radcliffe) spoke with EW about his unfinished film as he prepared for two test screenings in Chicago last week.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You are the third director to helm a Potter flick, after Chris Columbus and Alfonso Cuarón — though I understand you had a chance to direct the first film. Why did you pass on being the franchise's founding father?
MIKE NEWELL At the time I was deep into a film [1999's Pushing Tin], and even though it was a completely different story, it had a lot of computer graphics. I had read the first Potter novel; it was marvelous, but it was going to be difficult in that technical way, even more so because you're inventing the world. And at that time I was having a difficult time with that same technique. I remember being tremendously conflicted: ''God, I know I should — but can I? Arrrgggh!'' But the better man did it: Chris Columbus did a heroic job.
At 734 pages, Goblet was the first of Rowling's so-called ''fat'' Potter books. Was it easy for you and screenwriter Steve Kloves to condense?
Not in the least. We did about 12 formal drafts. A reader can read a rambling narrative like that with great satisfaction, but you can't possibly do that in a two-and-a-half-hour movie. So there was great angst not only about what one took out but how you gave it a form. That's one of the things I brought to it: This has to be a thriller, driven by Voldemort and his plot to get three drops of Harry's blood to regenerate himself.
