The universe of ‘Harry Potter’ became a successful movie saga that was much loved by the public, but the truth is that it could have been very different, since in a first attempt it was tried to Steven Spielberg was in charge of directing the first installment. In fact, he was attached to the project for several months before leaving it, but why exactly did he end up leaving what he himself knew was going to become a phenomenon?
Let’s go back to 1999, the year in which Spielberg was deciding what his next feature film would be after ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Everything indicated that it would be ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’, a project that Warner I wanted to move on as soon as possible. In addition, Spielberg was so liked within the studio that they did not see the fact of having to share the profits with him as a problem. dreamworksa company founded a few years earlier by Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and Spielberg himself, who at that time was betting heavily on animated films.
“My interests as a director take me in another direction“
The director of ‘Jaws’ commented years later that “I developed it for five or six months with Steve Kloves and then i abandoned the project“, but at the beginning of the year 2000 he even released a statement to announce that he was finally not going to direct the film:
I am certain that the ‘Harry Potter’ film series will be a phenomenal success. JK Rowling’s vision of Harry Potter is modern genius. Warner Bros. and its president Alan Horn have been more than generous in giving me the time to make a decision. However, at the moment, my interests as a director take me in another direction. Most importantly, I am looking forward to reading the fourth “Harry Potter” book this summer and taking my family to see the first movie next summer.
Spielberg finally chose to deal with ‘Artificial Intelligence’, a project he inherited from stanley kubrick, and certain rumors began to emerge around what had led to his departure from ‘Harry Potter’. The most widespread were that he wanted to make an animated film and that he wanted elements from several of the books in the series together in one film. However, the producer david hayman claimed in 2001 that this was false and that he simply “Spielberg had three projects he was considering and wanted to make the one that came to fruition first.“. Matter settled? Not at all.
Spielberg himself claimed in 2001 that he deliberately avoided making the film because it was not a challenge and he was not interested in easy success and guaranteed money:
I really think as I get older I have a responsibility to tell stories that are a little more authentic. I purposely didn’t do the Harry Potter movie because to me it was like shooting ducks in a barrel. It’s a target shot. It’s like taking out a billion dollars and depositing it into your personal bank accounts. There is no challenge in that.
clearing things up
We jump to the year 2010, because it was then when Alan Hornpresident of Warner Bros. between 1999 and 2012, who revealed that it was true both that Spielberg wanted to make an animated film and to adapt several books into a single feature film, making it clear that he was completely opposed to that idea:
I thought it would be worth having Steven Spielberg direct. We offered it to him. But one of Dreamworks and Steven’s ideas was, ‘Let’s combine a couple of books, let’s make it animated,’ and that was because visual effects and Pixar had shown that animated movies could be very successful. Due to the magic involved, they were highly charged with effects. So I don’t blame them. But I didn’t want to combine the movies and I wanted them to be live action.
Just a couple of years later, it was Spielberg himself who returned to address the issue of why he decided to reject the film and focus on other projects, and that even his kids thought he was crazy about it:
I just felt like I wasn’t ready to do a kids-only movie and my kids thought I was crazy. And the books were already popular at the time, so when I left her, I knew she was going to be a phenomenon. But, you know I don’t make movies because they’re going to be phenomenal. I make movies because they have to touch me in a way that really commits me to a year, two years, three years of work.
In the end, it all came down to Spielberg wanting freedom of movement to make ‘Harry Potter’ his own, but both Warner and JK Rowling they wanted to be faithful to the books. The typical creative differences -if they even explained it that way a few days after the announcement that the filmmaker abandoned the project- which are often alluded to in these cases, with the particularity that on this occasion we have many more details about it.
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