Days after Michael Goldenberg was announced to be scripting "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," Warner Bros. and producer David Heyman are close to setting British helmer David Yates to direct the fifth installment of the franchise according to Variety.

Yates has only bigscreen credit was the 1998 feature "The Tichborne Claimant," although was behind award-winning dramas "The Way We Live Now" and the "State of Play" mini-series. He is attached to direct Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany in WIP's "Brideshead Revisited."

Yates will likely have a directing deal in place by next week. The film is slated to start production late 2005 and hit theaters in summer 2007.

Thanks to 'KC'