When you’re the screenwriter stepping in to Chapter Five when a different guy wrote Chapters One through Four, you’re bound to have some trouble getting adjusted. Especially when you’re talking about the "Harry Potter" movies.
Prior to 2007, Michael Goldenberg‘s three screenwriting credits were "Bed of Roses" (1996), "Contact" (1997), and "Peter Pan" (2003). So imagine how he must have felt stepping into "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" after seeing how well Steven Kloves did with his adaptations of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" (2001), "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002), "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (2004), and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (2005). PLUS it looks to be only a temporary gig; Mr. Kloves is set to return for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." (There, I got all the Harry Potter titles into one paragraph. Someone should go write a book called "Harry Potter and Scott’s Aching Fingers.")
Anyway, one of the better HP fansites scored an exclusive, expansive, and very thorough interview with Mr. Goldenberg, and (of course) they stick almost exclusively to "Harry Potter 5" chit-chat. (Seems that Mr. Kloves simply needed a break from the series, and Goldenberg was the scribe who got lucky. Cool for him.) The article covers a variety of material, most notably some erroneous reports that Potter creator JK Rowling was unhappy with the fifth film. The writer also bends over backwards trying to explain why you HAVE to excise some material from a book as huge as "Phoenix" — but he’s pretty happy with what he and director David Yates has put together.
"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" opens on July 13th. Heck, I don’t even read the books and I wanna see the darn movie already.
Source: The Leaky Cauldron
