Best Thing Steven Spielberg Ever Did for Harry Potter Was Walk Away

Steven Spielberg famously passed on directing Harry Potter. Overall, it was the right decision that benefited all parties involved.

The story goes that Spielberg was one of the directors in the running to adapt the first movie in J.K. Rowling‘s fantasy series. At Stanley Kubrick‘s funeral, Stanley’s wife, Christiane Kubrick, and her brother, Jan Harlan, approached Spielberg to see if he would direct A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Kubrick was originally developing A.I., but passed the film to Spielberg in the mid-1990s. Nothing came of it until after Kubrick’s death.

As we know, Spielberg ended up directing A.I. However, he had to pass on making what became Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Spielberg’s protege, Chris Columbus, ended up directing Harry Potter instead.

“I actually walked away from Harry Potter, which I was scheduled to direct as my next movie,” Spielberg said to TCM. “I gave it up. It was going to be a huge movie because the book already was a runaway cultural phenomenon. I gave that up to essentially do AI.”

Spielberg’s animated Harry Potter movies would’ve led to a very different franchise

Had Spielberg directed Harry Potter, it would have been a completely different movie. Originally, Spielberg wanted to direct an animated movie through DreamWorks Animation. Spielberg also wanted to condense multiple books into one story.

Warner Bros. studio head Alan Horn spoke about Spielberg’s original plans for Harry Potter. “I did think it would be worthwhile for Steven Spielberg to direct,” Horn said in the L.A. Times via Indiewire. “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.”

Haley Joel Osment, who starred in A.I., also confirmed that Spielberg’s original treatment for Harry Potter was an animated movie (via CinemaBlend).

I’m confident Spielberg would have made a great animated version of Harry Potter. He would have figured it out. However, the live-action Harry Potter movies became one of the most beloved franchises of the 21st century. The films have combined to gross over $7.7 billion. worldwide. The popularity has led to theme parks, merchandise, and an upcoming HBO show.

It’s difficult to imagine Harry Potter without its live-action cast, including Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson. They became as much an important parts of fans’ lives as their characters.

Things have a way of working themselves out, and Spielberg passing on Harry Potter turned out great for everyone involved.

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