Harry Potter 4 director Mike Newell says he has spoken with Alfonso Cuarón, who is currently directing
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, to make sure his film picks up where Cuarón's leaves off.
The original cast members, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson are all reprising their roles. "They're all actually the age they are in the story," Newell told
SciFi-Wire.
"What Alfonso has done very remarkably is he's developed the films from a sunny vision of childhood into something that is much darker and blacker," Newell said. "And he's done that without taking away any of the romance of the thing. But he has transformed it into adolescence, and I must go on from what he's done. [I] can't go back."
Newell says that have already begun preproduction and expect to shoot in late April or early May.