In a profile piece on J.K. Rowling by
Variety Michael Goldenberg, the screenwriter for
Order of the Phoenix, discusses working with the author and creating scenes for the film that weren't in the book.
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"I was really encouraged to find the best way to make it work as a movie," he says, "and often that entailed coming up with something that wasn't in the book. I ended up writing a lot more original material than I expected to."
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"There was no real scene in the book where they (Harry & Sirius) really had a heart-to-heart talk," says the screenwriter. "In an 870-page book, Rowling could do it incrementally with a brush stroke here and a line there, and it has a cumulative effect. But we don't have that kind of canvas in film. Rowling has seen what makes a good movie; a translation process that tries to capture the spirit rather than the letter is more successful."