There Can Be Only One

Given the corpulent pagination of the fourth Harry Potter book, more than a few people have mooted the idea that someone might have to pull a Kill Bill and split Goblet of Fire right down the middle. Since the previous films ran at two-and-a-half hours despite the source material's slender build, there seemed almost no way director Mike Newell could keep the bulk of Rowling's hefty tome within a single movie's runtime. Not so, insists the director. Allaying fears that he'll turn out a two-act Potter, Newell told Empire that it's one film all the way. "As far as I'm concerned it's absolutely possible to do it in one. I think it would be slightly embarrassing to do it in two." The Four Weddings director will also be taking the franchise in yet another new direction. "It's a classic paranoid thriller in a way. I've spent Christmas watching things like The Parallax View and The Insider and Three Days of the Condor. What you have is a story at the beginning of which the powers of evil have a plan, which is absolutely not revealed to your hero. The kid just wonders into another year at school, then this huge notion of the competition surprises him. But there is, of course, a malign intelligence which is manipulating things. And so he gets more and more suspicious until there is a shoot-out between him and the bad guy. That's a really good, strong thriller shape." The full article can be found in the March issue of Empire, on sale now. To subscribe for just