The Half-Blood Helmer

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is maybe the movie I'm most anticipating this Summer - at least in terms of the Big Summer Movies - so I'm gonna take the news that Phoenix's director, the unknown (at least Stateside) quantity that is David Yates, is getting the opportunity to helm the next film as good news for what he's done with this film.

I'm positive like that, see? From SciFi Wire:

"David Yates, director of the upcoming Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, confirmed to SCI FI Wire that he will return to the director's chair for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth film in the blockbuster franchise. Yates, the British director best known for the U.K. miniseries State of Play and The Girl in the Cafe, is currently completing Phoenix, based on J.K. Rowling's fifth Potter book, and had been rumored to be attached to Prince.

"I am doing Half-Blood Prince, and I'm doing it because I love the world, I love the characters," the BAFTA-winning director said in an interview. "I think I have more business with this world and these characters... I've made a kind of tonal shift with the fifth film, which I want to continue and develop into the sixth film," Yates said. "And I can see the fifth story evolving into the sixth story in a really interesting way. So I'm on a journey with this material and this world, and I'm keen to complete it."

Yates would become only the second director to helm more than one Potter film, after Chris Columbus, who directed the first two. Alfonso Cuarón directed the third, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Mike Newell the fourth, Goblet of Fire."

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