10. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part I
Warner Bros.Here's the setup: You're a big shot producer in the movie business. You were smart enough to buy the rights to a multi-novel children's fantasy series before anyone else, and as sequel after sequel has released, you've been riding the gravy train all the way to the bank. Life's going great, you live pretty much on autopilot, what more could you ask for? There's a catch however. You're multi-billion dollar film franchise is coming to an end soon, which means you may have to... *gulp*... find original content to produce. The world can be so cruel sometimes. After all, that house in Malibu doesn't pay for itself. Think, think, think. You're a smart guy, you can think of a way out of this. What to do when you're in trouble? Procrastinate, that sounds good. Eureka! Of course, it was there all along. Take the last book and divide it into two movies and watch double the profits roll on in. You knew there was a reason you are so rich. This super cynical take on the motivations of dividing one book into two feature films may be a bit over the top, but the move always stinks of a cash grab. After all, the art of film adaptation is not simply to transcribe the written word to written dialogue, but rather to edit the story into something that befits the medium of cinema. Books much longer and with more complex thematic issues than anything in the Harry Potter, Twilight, or Hunger Games series have been made into perfectly fine movies, so while there may be some artistic justification for splitting books into two films, the arguments for this are suspect.