“To me they just succeeded”: Lily Collins names the greatest movie series of all time
Lily Collins might catch strays because of her routinely-mocked role in the Netflix comedy series Emily in Paris, but that doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t be taken seriously.
In addition to having great picks for her favourite films, she has worked with acclaimed filmmakers, such as David Fincher, Bong Joon-ho, Ti West, Warren Beatty, and John Singleton, but she once advocated for a popular franchise that has become increasingly controversial.
The Harry Potter franchise has been subjected to serious backlash due to the views of author JK Rowling, but Collins’ comments came in 2012, when the series was much more universally beloved, saying, “I read those books so quickly when I was a kid. I just love magic, and I loved that whole world, the creatures, and just how you felt so friendly with all the characters. The way they translated that into movies, I thought, was genius.”
Not every great book is turned into a great movie, which has been particularly evident thanks to the many other young adult series that attempted to capture the same magic as Harry Potter; the adaptation of other YA novels, such as The Fifth Wave, Divergent, The Darkest Minds, The Giver, and The Host were all notorious failures. However, Collins said that the Harry Potter films succeeded as adaptations.
At its height, the franchise was a phenomenon as big as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as Warner Bros had managed to release eight films in a decade, ensuring that the actors still looked age-appropriate for their roles, and while many would cite the Alfonso Cuarón directed third instalment, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, as being the best of the series, that the entire saga didn’t have a truly ‘bad’ entry is quite impressive.
“You know when they take a book, and they make it a movie, and you hope that it’s gonna be everything that you hope for and more?” she explained, “To me, they just succeeded. I don’t know, I just love them so much. Every time I’m sick, I’ll watch a marathon of them, and I can repeat all the words.”
Interestingly, Collins gave a shoutout to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as the best, one of the more divisive entries in the series, which is where we are first introduced to Ralph Fiennes’ Voldemort. It’s usually considered one of the weaker links as it suffered from some pacing issues due to the length of the novel, and given how much detail is put into the backstory of the Triwizard Tournament, it could have feasibly been adapted into two films, just as the final novel, Deathly Hallows, was.
Regardless of the original run ending in 2011, the actor may not have completely lost her shot to appear in a Wizarding World production, as one of the first announcements made during David Zaslav’s reign at the newly formed Warner Bros Discovery conglomerate was that a new Harry Potter series was in production for streaming.
Even with the news that Warner Bros has been acquired by Paramount and David Ellison, the show is still a top priority, and has not failed to court major actors in some of the supporting roles, and given that the plan is to make seven seasons, one for each book, Collins has more than a few opportunities to be part of her comfort watch.
