“I’m very happy to have done”: the colossal 2001 movie Steven Spielberg “chose not to make”
In many cases, you can spot a hit movie from a mile away. As the single highest-grossing director in cinema history, Steven Spielberg can spot them better than most, not that adding another nailed-on box office behemoth to his collection was enough to make him say yes to the job.
Some directors could desperately use a hit to revive their flagging careers, while others use it to their advantage to start playing in bigger, costlier, and more ambitious sandboxes. At this stage of his career, Spielberg doesn’t need one, and he’s also in the position to weather a flop or two without losing an inch of ground.
That’s what happens when you’ve got three Academy Awards and a filmography overflowing with some of the greatest, most influential, and iconic films of the last 50 years, and when you’re the guy who made Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, and many more, you won’t be losing any sleep over turning down a picture that launched a cultural phenomenon.
He’d already been there, done that, and gotten more than enough T-shirts, and he even learned how to turn chicken shit into chicken salad when Cubby Broccoli turned him down twice as a James Bond director, only for Spielberg to give one of Hollywood’s greatest ‘fuck you’ moments when he turned around and created Indiana Jones with George Lucas instead.
Shortly before the turn of the millennium, Spielberg declined the chance to helm Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace because it was his best friend’s baby, and Lucas was the only one who should be taking the reins. That movie split opinion, but it was an inescapable pop culture obsession nonetheless. Not too long after we’d all somehow managed to survive the Y2K apocalypse, a very similar thing would happen.
“There were several films I chose not to make,” the legendary filmmaker opined. “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.”
He knew it would be sensation, and it was. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone ended its theatrical run as the second top-earning release of all time, behind James Cameron’s Titanic, spawned a merchandising empire that continues to generate billions, launched what was the most lucrative film series in history until Marvel came along, and maintains a devoted and occasionally fanatical following around the world.
Spielberg put his family first, but he also intimated that putting the building blocks in place by helming the first Harry Potter flick would have been too easy. Comparing it to “shooting ducks in a barrel,” he compared the idea to “withdrawing a billion dollars and putting it into your personal bank accounts,” suggesting that “there’s no challenge” when it was guaranteed to be one of the biggest films ever.
It certainly was that, and while another ten-figure haul would have extended his lead as the industry’s top money-spinning auteur, he put his family life first, stepped aside, and took nothing to do with the eight-film saga and the vice-like grip it’s held on the entertainment industry for the last 25 years.
