It’s difficult to imagine at this late stage in Harry Potter’s cinematic saga, but once upon a time in a galaxy not that far away Steven Spielberg had some very different plans for the franchise.
The L. A. Times’ Hero Complex is reporting that Spielberg – whose Dreamworks Pictures were initially considered as financial partners for Warner Bros. after they latter secured the film rights to the first four books – had his own priorities for adapting the franchise, some of which proved more attractive than others to the studio’s President and COO, Alan Horn.
“I did think it would be worthwhile for Steven Spielberg to direct. We offered it to him. But one of the notions of Dreamworks’ and Steven’s was, ‘Let’s combine a couple of the books, let’s make it animated,’ and that was because of the [visual effects and] Pixar had demonstrated that animated movies could be extremely successful. Because of the wizardry involved, they were very effects-laden. So I don’t blame them. But I did not want to combine the movies, and I wanted it to be live action.”
Other than the fact that we’d most likely be done by now, the franchise would have also suffered the loss of some truly inspired performances. With the odd exception, the Potter franchise has benefiting from some of the best actor-character continuity in movie history. Having the characters age at a similar rate to audiences and maintaining outstanding internal consistency – there will have been eight movies by franchise’s end – has added an extra dimension to the series, going some way towards making the upcoming Deathly Hallows the ‘Motion Picture Event Of A Generation’ that the promotional campaign is advertising.
Although Christopher Columbus was by no means the best thing to happen to the Harry Potter franchise, he did at least lay the seeds for Alfonso Cuaron, Mike Newell and David Yates to cultivate. Had J. K. Rowling not fought for a British cast and remained as involved in the filmmaking process as she has, it is quite possible that the upcoming releases of Part I and Part II respectively wouldn’t be as anticipated, or the series as revered, as it has been.
