Director David Yates on the set of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix © 2007 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R. Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Considering that the Harry Potter franchise has attracted some major-league film directing talent — the last two, for example, were helmed by Four Weddings and a Funeral's Mike Newell and Children of Men's Alfonso Cuarón — it's surprising that the name "David Yates" isn't one that is instantly recognizable. Known for crafting intense, gritty dramas for British television, Yates was tapped to guide Harry and his mates through the darkest period of their young lives in the upcoming Order of the Phoenix. Warner Bros. was reportedly so thrilled with the results that they signed on Yates to tackle the adaptation of Book Six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, before Order of the Phoenix even screened.

Premiere.com caught up with the understandably exhausted but still enthusiastic Yates between finishing Phoenix and starting on Prince.

PREMIERE.COM: Was the thought of taking on a franchise the size of Harry Potter at all daunting?
DAVID YATES: Do you know what? It's been a really exciting trip. I don't think I was ever quite daunted, I just felt buzzed about the whole possibility. There's always a moment before you make anything — and this goes back to the first 16 mm film I made when I was about 20 — where you get cold feet and you think, Can I really do this? And I had that for about 5 minutes on this movie and then it was gone. It just felt like the right time and the right thing to do and I just jumped in with both feet and went for it. And you're so busy, because they're such gargantuan films, that it's hard to stop and think. You just do it. And that's what I did, I just did it. And had a ball doing it.

How did you get involved in the project?
It was an odd thing, I had just finished a big television drama, because that's where I was doing most of my work, and I'd been developing a couple of feature films, one of which Warner Bros. was involved in. A thing called Brideshead Revisited, which is this period drama. And they just kind of phoned up and said, "Would you like to come in and talk about Harry Potter?" And I know they've been watching my work for a little while and I know there were other directors in the frame as well — very established movie directors. But it seemed very quickly, as soon as I turned up, that they were very open and kind of tuned in to what I'd been making. It all seemed very natural and it sort of fell into place, basically.