Rowling’s first Harry Potter book hit the stores in 1997 in England (where it was known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) and became an instant success. By 1998, it had made its way across the Atlantic and Warner Bros. studio had taken an immediate interest in the property. They paid $2 million for the rights to the first four books, and Steven Spielberg was the person pegged to helm this promising new franchise in its transition to the big screen. However, Spielberg envisioned the Harry Potter films as CGI-animated affairs. He had noted the phenomenal success that Pixar had with Toy Story in 1995, and he knew that the Harry Potter movies would require plenty of special effects scenes to bring the story to life. So he believed that CGI-animation was the best way to go with the property. He also planned on combining two of the books into a single movie instead of doing a separate film for each. The president of Warner Bros. did not see eye-to-eye with this approach, though, preferring live action films and a single movie per book. Spielberg eventually bowed out of the Harry Potter movies and would go on to do AI: Artificial Intelligence for Warner Bros. in 2001.
The names of several other directors were then tossed out including Terry Gilliam, Alan Parker, Wolfgang Petersen, Rob Reiner, Brad Silberling, Peter Weir and of course Christopher Columbus. This would be narrowed down to Gilliam, Parker, Silberling, and Columbus and Rowling would have preferred that Gilliam take up the director’s chair. But Warner Bros. would eventually award Columbus with the task of shepherding Harry Potter to the big screens. Based on the popularity of the movies, that must have been the right choice. But wouldn’t have been interesting to see the animated interpretation of the character that Spielberg would have created, or just think how differently it would have turned out in Terry Gilliam’s hands.
Source: LA Time Hero Complex and Wikipedia
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