Steven Spielberg is responsible for directing some of the best and biggest blockbusters of his time, but many movie fans may not know that he was supposed to helm the first Harry Potter movie. However, Spielberg has explained that he had given up leading the fantasy adaptation to fulfill the dying wishes of his friend and fellow movie legend Stanley Kubrick.
When Kubrick passed away in 1999, he was partway through bringing sci-fi drama AI: Artificial Intelligence to the screen. But after Kubrick's death, Spielberg felt he had to take the project on at that very moment. "After [Stanley Kubrick's] death, I was at the funeral at his home. Christiane [Kubrick] and Jan Harlan, her brother, approached me about taking over from Stanley, as Stanley had intended, and directing the movie," explains Spielberg in an interview with TCM.
At the time, Spielberg was getting ready to direct the first Harry Potter movie. "I actually walked away from Harry Potter, which I was scheduled to direct as my next movie," added Spielberg, explaining that he had even been a part of casting decisions at that point. "I gave it up. It was going to be a huge movie because the book already was a runaway cultural phenomenon. I gave that up to essentially do AI."
Set in the future, AI follows a childlike android who has been programmed to love and longs to become human. Kubrick originally acquired the rights to the story in the early '70s and hired multiple writers, including the short story's original scribe Brian Aldiss. However, the project was stuck in early development for years. It was said that Kubrick felt that technology was not advanced enough at that point to bring the story to life and that there wasn't a child actor out there who could bring the robot to life.
So in 1995, Kubrick handed the movie over to Spielberg. After Kubrick died, Spielberg moved forward with the movie, and it was released in 2001, starring Haley Joel Osment as the young robot. Spielberg dedicated the film to Kubrick. The first Harry Potter movie, on the other hand, was directed by Chris Columbus, who would go on to helm the sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Next up for Spielberg is Disclosure Day, which is out in cinemas in the UK now and hits US theatres on June 12. For more, check out our guide to the best Alien movies, and keep up with upcoming movies heading your way this year and beyond.
