Last night, I logged onto Mugglenet, a Web site which I rather embarrassingly frequent. It features all things Harry Potter, from book mistakes to character name origins to a spell encyclopedia to the most recent Potter-related news. Its lead story Wednesday night was that "HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS" WILL BE SPLIT INTO TWO MOVIES!

This makes me unbelievably extraordinarily excited. The idea has been rumored for a long time now, but it seemed like one of those things that the crazy British tabloids just made up, and no one was putting much stock into it.

Now, however, it has been officially confirmed, and I could not be happier.

The two films, simply and uncreatively called "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2," will be directed by David Yates, who directed "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" and is currently working on "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." They are to be released in November 2010 and May 2011, respectively.

Being a fairly serious Harry Potter fan, I've had more than a few issues with the first five movies. I know this isn't really true, but it seems to me like the directors just don't seem to care. They cut out all the fun subplots, all the funniest parts of the phenomenal book series, just because those parts don't relate to Harry's angsty problems, and they take up time.

I suppose the filmmakers have got to leave time for Harry's all-important floor-writhing (seriously, every single movie). The books are admittedly just too darn long to keep everything in, but they've really left out some ridiculous things. Previous directors have also changed random parts of the stories and totally messed up characters (I've got some serious ranting to do about the film version of Hermione).

This is why the idea of "Deathly Hallows" being split into two full-length films is so exciting to me. David Heyman, producer of all of the movies, said that it was a purely creative decision, because they couldn't really cut anything out of the seventh book. There are no subplots, no little extra stories not related to the main plot, nothing that's not important.

I have always been of the opinion that they could easily get away with a three- or four-hour movie if they wanted. It's Harry Potter, the phenomenon that has taken over the world of pop culture for the past 10 years. It's not like people wouldn't see it, and it's not as if they're going to run out of money.

With all the opportunities that will come with producing two movies instead of one, I think that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is already well on its way to being the best in the series, and might actually have a chance at being a really high-quality film.

We'll see, though. Five mediocre films have severely lowered my expectations, and all of the previous cuts have left Yates with a lot to make up for. Plus, Daniel Radcliffe isn't what I'd call a fantastic actor, and the seventh installment is going to require a lot from him that he may not be able to handle.

I am, however, very excited. I'm already having a hard enough time waiting for "Half-Blood Prince," which is coming out in November, so I don't know what I'm going to do for two years after that.

I guess that for now I'll just continue perpetually rereading the books until I can recite them word for word. Then, I have big plans to write my own phenomenal best-selling world-dominating series about a girl with mind control powers. So maybe by the time "Deathly Hallows" is released, I'll be far too busy making millions of dollars.

Or maybe I'll just be a poor, lowly college student dorkily camping outside the nearest movie theater with a lightning scar tattooed on my forehead. We'll just have to see.