The adored and favorite character of Chris Columbus, the director of the first two parts of the Harry Potter saga, the ghost Peeves was unfortunately cut during the editing. And we are not ready to see it…
In a podcast organized by Entertainment Weekly in 2016, Chris Columbus, the first director to have directed the first two installments of the Harry Potter franchise, evoked many memories of filming, and also some regrets. Starting with the one concerning the disappearance of the Poltergeist Peeves, the poltergeist who haunts the castle and drives the caretaker Filch crazy. He was, according to the filmmaker, his favorite character.
Played by Rik Mayall, his scenes were unfortunately cut during the editing, and did not even appear in the DVD edition of the film. “Unfortunately we had to make cuts” he explained, “because the first cut gave a film of nearly 3 hours. It had to be basically a character entirely in CGI.
In the end, it saved us a lot of money. [NDR : de ne pas le faire sous cette forme], but it also broke a lot of hearts. In any case, the sequences exist, so there may be the possibility of seeing the images of the character one day and reintegrating them into the film if people want to.. Like a short message to Harry Potter fans to express more or less loudly their effective desire to see these scenes…
If the latter obviously did not hide their desire to see them, the cold shower came from the side of Warner, who turned a deaf ear. In 2021, invited in a podcast organized this time by the site The Wrap, Chris Colombus again returned to the charge, evoking the long version of the first Harry Potter film in which the scenes of Peeves would be reinstated.
The filmmaker confided that the first version ofHarry Potter at the Sorcerer’s Stone which was shown at Warner Bros. in test projection lasted no less than three hours; i.e. 30 minutes longer than the version released in theaters in 2001. If a long version was released in theaters in the process, embellished with an additional 7 minutes, we are still far from the initial duration displayed on the counter.
“We knew this film was working, because we did a few screenings. In Chicago, the parents found it too long while the children, on the contrary, found it too short. I said to myself that since children normally have a duration of attention shorter, it was rather a good thing” confided the director in the interview.
The ball is now in Warner’s court, which has not, for the moment, planned this new version in its schedules; not even on its HBO platform. Even though the Major wants to start new films on the indestructible franchise.