Despite its massive success, Steven Spielberg doesn’t regret turning down the opportunity to direct the Harry Potter franchise. When Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released in 2001, the whimsical tale of Harry and his friends taking on evil villains in a wizarding school was helmed by the director of Home Alone, Chris Columbus. The movie became the first in a long line of films that explored Harry’s adventures in Hogwarts, though was nearly brought to life with a different person at the helm.
In an interview with Reliance Entertainment, Spielberg explained exactly why he turned down the chance to become a major face in the Harry Potter world — and why he doesn’t regret it.
Prior to Columbus’ ascension, Spielberg had the opportunity to direct Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. While Spielberg always has the opportunity to direct a Harry Potter spin-off today, turning down the franchise seems to have been the right move to him, as it allowed him ample time to spend with his family. Check out his quote below, via Collider:
The personal meaning about [how the conflict between] art and family will tear you in half happened to me later, after I had already established myself as a filmmaker, as a working director. Kate [Capshaw] and I started raising a family and we started having children. […] The choice I had to make in taking a job that would move me to another country for four or five months where I wouldn’t see my family every day… That was a ripping kind of experience.[…] There were several films I chose not to make. 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.
While Spielberg turned down Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, it has hardly impacted his career. Having directed Saving Private Ryan before it and Minority Report after, he has proven that he didn’t need the adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s beloved novel to buoy his career. While he has largely moved on to producing massive projects, Spielberg is still busy in Hollywood.
Spielberg’s story was recently told in The Fablemans, the true story of Spielberg’s childhood, and his real-world self has also been making a difference. He is currently working as an executive producer for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Even with the blockbuster scale, and time-intensive, nature of these two films alone, they aren’t the only movies that Spielberg is developing for the near future.
On the docket for Spielberg’s future is a new adaptation of The Color Purple, on which he’s producing, as well as Masters of the Air at Apple TV+ and the Bradley Cooper-starring Bullitt update, while a Napoleon biopic minseries, Blackhawk adaptation and The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara are all lingering in some form of development. While the future of Harry Potter might be questionable after the collapse of the Fantastic Beasts franchise, Spielberg has continued his successful career. Whatever is next for the Harry Potter franchise, Spielberg might be too busy to ever join the franchise, and he doesn’t seem to mind.