Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg has no shortage of hits to his credit. His list of box office smashes and accolades speaks for itself. But even the all-time greats like Spielberg end up passing on major opportunities. That was the case with the 79-year-old filmmaker passing on directing “Harry Potter.”
In an interview with TCM, Steven Spielberg discussed why he passed on directing one of the most successful franchises of all-time. He decided to walk away from the world-famous child wizard to focus on another project.
“I actually walked away from Harry Potter, which I was scheduled to direct as my next movie… I gave it up, it was going to be a huge movie… I gave that up to essentially do A.I.”
The movie in question, Artificial Intelligence, was a 2001 film starring Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law. The film’s original director, the legendary Stanley Kubrick, had the idea in mind since the 1970s.
But it wasn’t until Kubrick’s death in 1999 that the idea gained momentum. Steven Spielberg was asked to take over the project, leading it to the big screen. While the film wasn’t a commercial mega-hit, grossing over $235 million at the box office, the film remains one of the most critically-acclaimed hits on Spielberg’s resume.
Steven Spielberg Chose Family over Harry Potter
In a 2023 interview, Steven Spielberg recalled passing on Harry Potter for family reasons. The renowned director preferred to focus on his children instead of taking on a substantial project.
“I chose to turn down the first ‘Harry Potter’ to basically spend that next year and a half with my family, my young kids growing up. So I’d sacrificed a great franchise, which today looking back I’m very happy to have done, to be with my family.”
The decision seemed to work out all right. The Harry Potter film franchise went on to gross nearly $8 billion at the box office across eight total films. While four different directors tackled the entire series, the films did not disappoint.
But the series that fans know today would have been radically different had Steven Spielberg gotten his way.
Harry Potter Would Have Been an Animated Series
One of the original ideas for the Harry Potter series, at least in Spielberg’s vision, was an animated series. The plan was to mesh the stories from various books and turn them into an animated feature.
As a 2010 article in the Los Angeles Times notes, Steven Spielberg would have had his Dreamworks studio handle the project. Warner Brothers, which owns the rights to the franchise, decided to walk away from that idea. The studio insisted on making a live-action feature instead.
Ultimately, the deal fell through, with Warner Brothers’ idea prevailing. Fans of the franchise will be happy to know that Steven Spielberg’s idea hit the shelf.
Had Spielberg’s idea won, there’s no telling if an animated Harry Potter film would have even been as remotely successful as the film franchise ended up becoming. It’s one of those what-ifs that will live in movie history for the rest of time.
