Steven Spielberg originally envisioned HOOK as a musical starring Michael Jackson that would put a curse on the director

When Steven Spielberg he set out on the journey to make his Peter Pan film Hook, had a very different vision of it than what he actually achieved. Actually the director started thinking about making this film in 1982, after making it ET: The extraterrestrial.

At the time, newspapers began reporting that Spielberg was looking to cast pop legend Michael Jackson in the film. As you know, Jackson was also a huge fan of the Peter Pan story, and he was definitely involved at the time. This is something the two had in common, as Spielberg once said: “I still feel like Peter Pan. It was very difficult for me growing up.”

In 1985 Spielberg’s plans began to take shape and he cast Dusting Hoffman as Captain Hook and planned to develop the film as a musical. Composer John Williams also came on board and wrote several songs for the film. Crews were also starting to build sets in London.

In Steven Spielberg: a biographyWe learned that it was around this time that Spielberg had his first child and didn’t want to move to London to shoot the film. He also started having second thoughts and started looking for other films to make, and that’s when he came on board. Empire of the Sun.

Discussing this, Spielberg told The New York Times, “I was also drawn to the idea that this was a death of innocence, not an understatement of childhood…this was the opposite of Peter Pan.”

While Spielberg was making Empire of the Sun, Paramount Pictures continued work on the film Without Spielberg. Nick Castle, who played Michael Myers in Halloween and directed The Last Starfighter, was slated to direct the film, and the story he was developing centered on Peter Pan growing up and working as a lawyer in America, his time in Neverland ‘is forgotten, until Captain Hook returns and kidnaps Peter’s children.

When Spielberg learned of the new story direction, his interest in the project was revived and by the time he came on board, the project was well underway at Sony. When Spielberg came back on board, he had to break the news to Jackson that he would no longer be in the film.

Spielberg told Entertainment Weekly, “I called Michael and said, ‘It’s about a lawyer who is brought back to save his children and he discovers that he was once, when he was younger, Peter Pan.’ So Michael realized at that point that he wasn’t the same Peter Pan that he wanted to do.”

However, Vanity Fair later claimed that Jackson hired a sorcerer to place a curse on Spielberg when he missed the concert.

Robin Williams was then cast as Peter, with Hoffman still set to play Hook. Julia Roberts was cast as Tinker Bell and Who Framed Roger Rabbit star Bob Hoskins took over the role of Hook’s sidekick Smee.

Even though Spielberg didn’t like the movie, audiences like me loved it, and the movie still has a huge fan base to this day who will defend the greatness of this adventure movie!

Via: Yahoo