'Half-Blood Prince' DVD Release Has The 'Harry Potter' Stars Talking Love And Sexual Politics

With "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" hitting DVD tomorrow, a new countdown has begun not only to the opening of the Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, but also for the November, 2010 release of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1." As one of the DVD's many featurettes, director David Yates, producer David Heyman, and Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson discuss the relationships of "Half-Blood Prince" and the entire series.

"The romance and everything that is in the film is very strong. It does set the tone as being more mature from the way to go I think this time around," Daniel said.

Yates added: "This story really deals with the relationships a lot, with Rupert and his first relationship with Lavender Brown. So it's got lots of sexual and emotional politics, which is really good. So we're seeing the characters we love discovering much more profoundly the opposite sex."

Arguably, the film version of "Half-Blood Prince" dealt a lot more with the relationships than the novel, as the novel balanced the mystery element of the plot with the relationships subplot a lot better than the movie did. Yates clearly saw the romance as a good coming-of-age transition into "Deathly Hallows."

"It's much more of a romantic comedy," Emma noted. "It's much more about relationships and the trials and tribulations of love."

David Heyman outlined the many love stories that became entangled in "Half-Blood Prince."Harry sort of has a crush on Ginny, Ginny's going out with Dean Thomas but she sort of likes Harry, but they can't really tell each other what they feel," he said. "Similarly Ron likes Hermione, Hermione likes Ron, but neither can really express themselves so it leads to many comic mishaps and plenty of romantic awkwardness that's something that we all can relate to in some form or another."

"It's just enormous fun," Yates said about the many relationships in the film. "Actually, it has the best of what the books have, I think, in the sense that it's great fun one minute, incredibly intense the next, and very moving the moment after that. There's all these gear changes."

Fortunately, Yates will leave the majority of the romantic elements in "Half-Blood Prince" as he has said in interviews "Deathly Hallows" will be more cinema verite and focus on Harry, Hermione and Ron's journey after they leave Hogwarts more than the comedic elements of their relationships. But as it is the relationships between all of the characters that make the stories as powerful as they are, Yates left the groundwork in "Half-Blood Prince" to make the two "Deathly Hallows" films believable.

Tags Daniel Radcliffe, David Heyman, David Yates, DVD, Emma Watson, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Rupert Grint, Video