“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”
Director Chris Columbus thought he was going to be fired
Daniel Radcliffe was seen in the “Harry Potter” film series as the eponymous wizarding student.
© imago images / United Archives
“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” is celebrating a milestone birthday. Director Chris Columbus hasn’t seen the film in 20 years.
The first part of the successful “Harry Potter” film series was released 20 years ago. For his birthday, director Chris Columbus (63) remembers, among other things, the filming of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, during which the young leading actors Daniel Radcliffe (32), Rupert Grint (33) and Emma Watson (31) are still had a lot to learn.
Columbus expected “that I will probably be fired within the first two weeks”, he tells in an interview with the industry magazine “Variety”. Since the books were already very successful, he was aware that “I may never work again if I screw it up”.
After talking to the author JK Rowling (56), Columbus was initially relieved because she shared his vision for the film with him. For him a moment of “pure exhilaration”, but then panic broke out. The director knew that he had to deliver a work that satisfied both himself and the fans.
That’s why there were so many cuts
According to Columbus, the many cuts in the first part of the series are due to the inexperience of its main characters. Accordingly, Watson, Grint and Radcliffe, who were then still children, quickly lost their focus. In addition, the three were so excited in the first few weeks that they grinned into the camera the whole time. The Quidditch scene was particularly hard to shoot because there was a lot of work going on in front of the green screen. In “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” the trio was already “very professional”.
The last time Columbus saw his own film was the day it came out in theaters in the UK. “I was in London at the time and we already shot ‘The Chamber of Secrets’. I saw the entire film there and haven’t seen it since,” says the 63-year-old. But when the first film is on television, he keeps looking at individual scenes. He is “very proud” of the production and it is a “nice feeling” that people are still watching the first “Harry Potter”.
Another Potter movie?
After all these years there is apparently at least the possibility that in addition to the “Fantastic Beasts” series, other material from the Potter world will also appear on the big screen. Because he would love to adapt “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” as a director. “It’s a great play and the kids are even the right ages to play those roles. It’s one of my little fantasies.” The play takes place 19 years after the end of the last book.