Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1

STARRING Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman
WRITTEN BY Steve Kloves
DIRECTED BY David Yates

The Room of Requirement is on fire. On a soundstage outside London last August, Daniel Radcliffe serpentines around searing gas flames and between 30-foot-tall piles of furniture studded with treasures from previous Harry Potter movies: giant chess pieces from The Sorcerer’s Stone, Chinese lanterns from The Half-Blood Prince, Professor Trelawney’s teacups, Filch’s gramophone, Quidditch banners and bag-pipes and birdcages, potion jars for ”Essence of Murtlap” and ”Bouncing Spider Juice.” All of it — on screen at least — will be ablaze when computer-generated fire is added. Radcliffe, sweating, sprints toward the camera in terror and then stops, realizing that he botched his steps. ”Damn,” he says, jogging back into the mountain range of memories to shoot the scene again. ”I forgot a major part of that.”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — the seventh and final Potter novel — sold more than 11 million copies in just 24 hours when it debuted in July 2007, making it the fastest-selling book in history. It’s probably the fastest-read one, too. While there are no statistics to prove it, millions of readers raced through J.K. Rowling’s 759 pages at a Snitch-like pace that summer, desperate to discover the ultimate fate of the Boy Who Lived. Speeding through the film adaptation, though, won’t be an option. The Deathly Hallows, as most Potter fans already know, has been split into two films. Warner Bros. will release Part 1 on Nov. 19. Part 2 will arrive next summer, on July 15.