Like a holiday romance with a pretty Lithuanian girl who naively accepts your false claims of being a powerful blogger as truth, we don't want Harry Potter to end.

OK, that's a lie. We do want Harry Potter to end. Sometimes we wish that Harry Potter had never been born at all. But the Warner Bros big cheeses who rely on Harry Potter to keep them in private jets and man-made vagina-shaped residential islands don't want Harry Potter to end.

And what they say goes, because it's just been made official that Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows will be turned into two separate movies. Now Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows will be released in November 2010, with its sequel Harry Potter And The Even More Deathlier Hallows That Make The First Lot Of Deathly Hallows Look A Bit Wimpy And Shit will follow in May 2011.

The 'nine and a half' tactic is key in the fields of teaching and parenting. You threaten a naughty child with violence and give them until the count of then to behave. But then you get to nine and they're still defying you. Reaching ten means that you're either going to have concede authority to a screaming infant or actually punch it and live with the guilt for the rest of your life. So, suddenly, in a desperate attempt to draw it out, you blurt out "nine and a half" instead of "ten." 

Harry Potter's studio Warner Bros knows the 'nine and a half' tactic too, because it's just announced the biggest nine and a half of cinema history – it's splitting Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows in two.

The Harry Potter movies have been good for Warner Bros – each of the five made so far has a spot in the top 20 highest-grossing movies of all time. But the thing is, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows is the last Harry Potter book. Once that's been turned into a film there's nowhere left to go, unless Warner Bros decides to go with that unauthorised Harry Potter Vs The Dinosaurs On The Planet Of Tits spec script that we sent them last week.

Well, not quite nowhere to go, because Warner Bros has decided to follow through on threats it made in January and turn Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows into two separate movies. But it's not because they want to con the public out of twice as much money as before, oh no. As Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe – who's just made twice as much money from Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows as he thought he would – explains, it's because the book's quite long.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

"I think it's the only way you can do it, without cutting out a huge portion of the book. There have been compartmentalized subplots in the other books that have made them easier to cut — although those cuts were still to the horror of some fans — but the seventh book doesn't really have any subplots. It's one driving, pounding story from the word go." … Alan Horn, president and chief operating officer of Warner Bros. Entertainment, [said] "This way, we have an extra hour and a half, at least, to celebrate what this franchise has been and do justice to all the words and ideas that Jo has put in the amazing story," Horn said. "This is the end of the story too. We want to celebrate it. We want to give a full meal." 

And, you know, if they can give a full meal and make a cheeky extra $900 million at the same time, well then that's just dandy.

Also, the matter of who'll direct the Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallow movies has been cleared up. Although reports suggested that Steven Spielberg and Guillermo Del Toro wanted a shot at Harry Potter, directing duties will fall to David Yates, who'll have ratcheted up his tally of Harry Potter movies to four by the time the final Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows movie comes out.

That's if the second Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows movie really is the last one – splitting the movies is such a license to print money that we wouldn't be surprised if the second half of the second movie becomes a new film. And there's probably six or seven movies to be made of the lame epilogue bit at the end where it turns out that Harry Potter doesn't die.

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'Deathly Hallows' films are scheduled to be released in November 2010 and May 2011. - LA Times 

Let's say you're a movie studio and the insanely profitable series of books you've been adapting for six years is coming to an end – how do you keep the money flowing?

Simple – you start charging people twice to see one story. If reports are to be believed then Warner Bros is keen on chopping the Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows movie into two separate films, possibly with Steven Spielberg directing.

Halving the last Harry Potter would make sense, because one film could focus on the battle with Voldemort and the other could deal with the part where – spoiler alert – Harry Potter jets to Venus to fight the space piranhas.

The Harry Potter train is finally rattling to a standstill, and the statistics are mighty impressive. For instance, if you collected all the copies of Harry Potter novels ever sold and dropped them on JK Rowling's head, she'd die instantly. And if you pulled out the eyes of everyone who's seen a Harry Potter film, you'd be able to make the world's longest, most disgusting necklace.

But the trouble is that nobody wants Harry Potter to end. The Harry Potter fans want to know what happens to Harry after the ending of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows when – spoiler alert – Harry Potter pulls a unicorn's head off and kisses it with tongues. And JK Rowling has admitted that she'll probably write another Harry Potter book before long, which is great if you like that sort of thing.

But Warner Bros doesn't like that sort of thing – it wants to churn out Harry Potter movies forever because, even though only one of them was any good, the kids go nuts for them. All five of the Harry Potter movies are in the top 20 all-time box office list, so the demand is clearly still huge. But there are just two more Harry Potter movies to go and not everyone will be able to go to the Harry Potter theme park, so the studio has reportedly come across a cunning plan to keep the money rolling in.

Alongside reports that Steven Spielberg and Guillermo Del Toro are keen on filming Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, it's been claimed that the final Harry Potter book will be turned into two movies, a little like the Matrix sequels. Because we all know how ace they were, right? A source told the Mail On Sunday:

"There's so much to fit that the view is the last movie should be in two halves. There is a huge battle when Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe, takes on Voldemort that needs to be done really well."

Yeah, we're sure that the source must have been a real high-ranker. So high-ranking that they felt the need to explain the name of the actor who plays Harry Potter, even though everyone's already seen his penis.

But whoever takes on Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows – and however many movies the story spans – it's important that the film doesn't leave fans who have bought all the books and watched all the movies feeling disappointed. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows needs to be done well, especially the bit where Harry Potter beats Voldemort and grows older in peace and has children of his own.

Oh, spoiler alert.

Read more:

Deathly Hallows Split In Two? – IGN