Chris Columbus says he was terrified every day while working on HARRY POTTER thinking he might get fired

Director Chris Colombo he directed the first two films in the Harry Potter saga, and while Columbus is a trusted director, he has successfully made numerous blockbuster films that have stood the test of time, such as Adventures in babysitting, Home alone, Mrs. DoubtAND Stepmother, was intimidated by the scope of these films and the weight they carried. In a 2020 interview with Collider, the director said:

“The reality is that the pressure of the world was on us, and on me in particular because I knew that if I screwed it up it would end. You can’t ruin this book. So I had to go to set every day with a kind of tunnel vision in terms of not thinking about the outside world, and that was a lot easier 19 years ago, before the Internet exploded.

He went on to talk about how he was a ball of nerves all the time, but hid it from the cast and crew:

“The first film was filled with anxiety for me. The first two weeks I thought I was going to get fired every day. Everything seemed fine, I just thought that if I did one thing wrong, if I screwed up, I would get fired. And it was intense. I didn’t allow any of that on set, there was no frustration, I’m not a yeller, I get along with everyone and I want everyone to feel like part of the family, so I just had to do it. hide that side of my emotions.

Columbus was asked when he knew he had nailed the adaptation, and he told a story about screening a nearly three-hour rough cut for Chicago audiences:

“Once the film is finished and shown in Chicago, it is fortunate for us to screen our films in Chicago, so back in the days when we could go to the movies we would fly to Chicago and show the film.” an audience – the audience loved it. The audience simply devoured the film. At that point the movie was two hours and fifty minutes long and the kids thought it was too short and the parents thought it was too long.”

In the end, 18 minutes were shaved off to make what we saw in theaters. The director said he felt invigorated by that first screening and was finally able to relax while he directed the second film, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secretswith which it was filmed one after the other Philosopher’s Stone:

“So I started to feel a little bit of relief, and then when the first movie started well I enjoyed Chamber of Secrets a lot more. It was like night and day, because then I could really free myself a little and bring a little more of my particular style to the film. It was a very specific choice, the style of the first Potter film, but partly we were trapped because, as I said, we had three cameras on the kids at a time. They were brand new, they had never been on movie sets, so they would say a line and look into the camera and smile. The first week they were so happy to be in Harry Potter, it meant so much to them, so they were smiling like they were in a trance. So that was also something we had to overcome.”

Columbus handed the directorial reins to Alfonso Cuaron for Prisoner of Azkaban after the exhaustive process of making the first two films, and when I asked him if he would ever consider returning to the franchise, he confirmed that he would I would have loved to adapt the film. last book, but he admits that director David Yates – who directed the last four Potter films – did an exceptional job:

“I’ve always wanted to go back and do the last two films, but Yates decided he was going to stay with the series, and that was a great thing to do because I especially love the last film. I think it’s just a brilliant film, the second part of Deathly Hallows.”

All the films turned out to be really great. The only complaint from a fan’s perspective was that much of the story was cut from the films based on books 4-7. But I hope this gets resolved in the next Harry Potter series that heads to MAX.