Everything is going to change now, isn't it?" Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) whispers to Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) toward the end of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

While "Goblet of Fire," the fourth installment in the Warner Bros. juggernaut, has plenty of important textual changes -- Triwizard challenges, resurrected Dark Lords and burgeoning sexuality just off the top -- the shift behind the camera may have been just as big.

The departure of original director Chris Columbus after the second film allowed producers to push "Harry Potter" in the direction of becoming a director's franchise, rather than just photographed reproductions of J.K. Rowling's international bestsellers. Fresh off "Y Tu Mama Tambien," Alfonso Cuaron delivered a new artistic richness and shades of emotional maturity to the series with "Prisoner of Azkaban." And now Mike Newell, originally considered for the first film, was recruited to similarly provide his own interpretation of the material.

"You don't bring in a director like Mike Newell and tell him, 'Well, you've got to make a film just like Chris Columbus,'" explains producer David Heyman. "It'd be foolish. So for me, I look this film, I see Mike Newell. I mean, I see Jo Rowling, but I see Mike Newell written all over it and that's really exciting for me."

From period romances ("Enchanted April") to modern comedies ("Four Weddings and a Funeral") to gangster dramas ("Donnie Brasco"), Newell has developed a reputation for jumping from genre to genre with ease. Heyman encouraged the director's versatility from their first meeting.

"What he said was 'You must read the book and if you find a way of doing the book, then you must tell us what that is. You've got to be able to see how to make a 750-page book into a single movie,'" Newell recalls.

He continues, "And we then had one of the meetings made in heaven, where we talked about the thing as being a thriller, because that's what I found in it. I thought that it was an absolutely God-given thriller and then I convinced him."

Over the years, Newell has also been hailed for his ability to work with actors of all experience levels, a gift that came in particularly handy with the mixture of seasoned British legends and still relatively green youngsters making up the "Goblet of Fire" cast. The film's core wee wizards -- Radcliffe, Watson and Rupert Grint -- felt particularly impressed and empowered.

"Alfonso put a lot of trust in us and it was so nice that he really wanted to hear what we had to say and what we thought, but Mike kind of took it to a new level," Watson says. "In a way, I think, I'd be doing something really difficult and I'd just say, 'I can't get this right. Just tell me what you want me to do. Just tell me how you want this to be, I'm going crazy.' And he'd just say, 'I can't tell you how to do it. I'm not going to tell you how to do it.'"

"She was very available," Newell says. "She's not the best returner of a phone call that I've come across, but she was fine. She gave me very clear things when I needed them like 'What does the Avada Kedavra curse actually do when it hits you?' She also has this very strong view of how the story fitted into this seven-book arc."

Newell's part in the seven-book arc is now complete. Respected television director David Yates ("State of Play") will direct "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," and a new director probably will be found to handle duties on "The Half-Blood Prince."

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