'Harry Potter' Director, Daniel Radcliffe Reveal 'Deathly Hallows' Secrets

David Yates plans to use CGI to age his young cast for final scene that picks up two decades in the future.




The Hogwarts kids aren't getting a summer vacation. Daniel Radcliffe and his crew of young wizards and witches have been jetting across the globe to promote "Harry Potter" film #6 — "The Half-Blood Prince" — and when they return to the U.K., they'll pick up filming the two-part franchise finale, "Deathly Hallows."

Away from the film set, though, and settled into their spree of red carpets and media interviews, the cast and crew were able to reflect on how they plan to bring a rewarding end to the decade-long film series and which "Deathly Hallows" scenes have them sweating under their school uniforms (beware of spoilers below!).

"The final walk into the forest is what I'm kind of dreading, because I don't know still how I'm going to do that," Radcliffe revealed to MTV News, referring to the closing battle with Harry's archenemy, Lord Voldemort.

Radcliffe is hoping, however, that the presence of one of his acting idols — and his "Prisoner of Azkaban" co-star — on set will help quell his anxiety.

"The good thing is — it suddenly occurred to me the other day — Gary Oldman will be in there for that scene," the young actor said. "He's always somebody who — just from being around, I don't know whether it is from some kind of quite pure and childish desire to want to impress him or out of the fact that he just gets something out of me — having him around for some reason on the fifth film was such an amazing thing for me as an actor, and hopefully he'll have that effect again."

Oldman's wizard, Sirius Black, won't be the only past "Potter" character popping up in "Deathly Hallows." Expect Professor Pomona Sprout and the half-giant Hagrid, among many others.

"I want to get them all back," director David Yates told us.

Following the epic Harry vs. Voldemort battle, author J.K. Rowling closed her book series with an epilogue that picks up almost two decades in the future. For the film, does that mean older actors will portray the grown-up students? Not a chance, Yates said.

"There's something extraordinary about the audience's knowledge of them when they were this high and then seeing them where they are 38," he said. "There's something really beautiful about that circle, so it has to be them. I think if after seven or eight movies, we recast them in that last scene — we all thought, 'No way, we can't do that.' "

Recent films like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Terminator Salvation" have employed cutting-edge CGI technology to make Brad Pitt and Arnold Schwarzenegger look youthful or elderly, and Yates plans to use a similar approach in "Deathly Hallows."

Radcliffe admitted that he always feared the epilogue: "This is the last image people are going to have of the films, and I'd rather they did it with other actors than did it with us and it looked bad."

But after seeing how realistically visual effects modified an actor's age in "Benjamin Button," he's become a convert. "I might get to see what I'd look like if I was 5-foot-8, which will be a thrill for me!" he laughed.