After The Prisoner of Azkaban, I commented to a friend that if Warner Bros. were able to film all seven Harry Potter novels using the same cast but rotating directors, it would rank — in my opinion — as the most impressive achievement in cinematic adaptation.

Well, it’s happening. Still photos from the pending Half-Blood Prince are surfacing (the movie opens in the U.S. on Nov. 21). And while the carousel of creative storytellers seems to have stopped on David Yates, who helmed Order of the Phoenix and is directing Prince and both Deathly Hallows, I’m still blown away that in this age of escalating salaries, production costs, author interferences, artistic divides and audience apathy, this franchise has positively flourished. Because it hasn’t been the voice of one filmmaker and rather several interpretations of author J.K. Rowling’s world, I’d put the Potter series ahead of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings behemoth (and truthfully, it ain’t even close).