Once I got it, I had maybe five seconds of elation and then I was filled with complete terror and anxiety. His pride in landing the coveted project was quickly replaced by fear: “I worked so hard to get the job. Then she said, ‘Well, I see it exactly the same way.’ That was the moment I knew I had the job.” “I sat down with and she basically said, ‘How do you see the movie?’ And again, I just didn’t shut up for about two and a half hours,” says Columbus. Rowling and producer David Heyman in Scotland. Then finally, I heard from the studio that I would be getting the job - with one caveat”: a meeting with J.K. Basically, went home and waited about six or seven weeks - and I didn’t hear anything.
“This was just my one shot getting the Harry Potter job. “They were kind of shocked because no one in Hollywood writes anything for free,” says Columbus. I was terrified.”Īfter what he describes as an “impassioned 45-minute talk” where he explained his vision, Columbus recalls giving them his annotated script.
“I felt like a sixth-grader in a room full of principals, vice principals and teachers. “I remember sitting at the far end of a coffee table, and the chair felt like it was six inches shorter than everyone else’s chair,” says the director. There, he found a half-dozen executives, including then-studio boss Alan Horn. “I stayed up all night for like 10 days doing it, and then I walked into the Warner Bros. “It was about a 130-page document-slash-screenplay,” Columbus tells THR. He wanted to be the “last director in the room” in order to make a “lasting impression” and be the “freshest person in their memory.”ĭuring a two-week waiting period, Columbus wrote a director’s version of Steve Kloves’ script to explain his vision for the tone of the film.
I’d love to direct Harry Potter.'” After being told there were 25 others also eager to direct, Columbus knew he had to make an impression, so he asked his agent to secure him the final meeting. Once his daughter persuaded him to read Rowling’s Harry Potter books, Columbus tells THR, he “couldn’t put them down.” “I called my agent and I said, ‘Look, I need to get a meeting with Warner Bros. “This was just my one shot getting the Harry Potter job.”
will debut two new Potter-inspired TV projects: a four-part competition series, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tournament of House, hosted by Helen Mirren and a retrospective special to follow.Ĭolumbus, 63, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter and took a trip down Hogwarts memory lane, reflecting on his approach to adapting Rowling’s source material, working with Radcliffe, Watson and Grint, why he eventually left the franchise, and why he’d return to direct a Cursed Child adaptation. To mark the film’s 20th anniversary, Warner Bros.
The film - which just last year surpassed $1 billion at the global box office after a 4K rerelease in China and other markets - would not only launch the careers of then-newcomers Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as Harry, Ron and Hermione but spawn franchise spinoffs Fantastic Beasts and a Broadway play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, based on an original story by Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne. 14, 2001, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was the first of an eventual eight-film franchise based on Rowling’s seven-book saga about a young wizard attending the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Released in theaters two decades ago, on Nov. The Best Sustainable Fashion Brands to Shop on Earth Day