Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone at 20
It feels like yesterday, really,” says Chris Columbus, considering the impending 20th anniversary of Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, which is being marked in the UK by a cinema rerelease. “Every aspect of that first movie, in terms of initially auditioning for the job, and waiting to find out if I was going to get the job, the casting process, the building of the sets, the design of the entire world… everything is very vivid.”
The Harry Potter film series has, to date, earned $9.2bn at the worldwide box-office, adapting eight films from seven books, plus two (soon to be three) Fantastic Beasts spin-offs. And don’t forget the ever popular themepark attractions, Lego sets and studio tour that the films have inspired. But, back at the dawn of the 21st century, when producer David Heyman had acquired the rights to the first novel in J.K. Rowling’s series and was preparing to turn it into a movie with Warner Bros, the world-dominating franchise of the future was anything but certain.
Back then, just the first three books had been published, and the current landscape of franchise cinema was in its infancy. No wonder Columbus has vivid memories of that era. “The pressure of the possibility of disappointing millions of fans… that’s in your head every day,” he laughs. “You just have to push that away to make sure that you can focus on making the film. I couldn’t think about that
