WI: Terry Gilliam directs Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?

[HongCanucker]

An interesting part of Terry Gilliam's filmmaking career was that he had been a contender to direct "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". J.K Rowling had also considered him one of her first choices to direct the film. But the directing rights ultimately went to Chris Columbus and 1492 Productions, Gilliam walked away extremely unhappy, and we know how the movie turned out.

So, what if Warner Bros. gave Gilliam the job? How might the movie turn out, and how would the whole series pan out? Clearly with a man like TG at the helm the film as a whole would be pretty different in many ways.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

My thoughts from years back:

One change I can see Gilliam making -- taking a pretitle sequence from Vernon's PoV instead of Dumbledore's. Then again, JK herself may end up asking that part to be filmed, which could end up making the pretitle for OTL's 1st film onto the seconds'. From there, you've set a pattern of the pretitle told from a non-Hardy PoV:

3rd: breakout from Azkaban
4th: Frank Bryce overhears Voldemart, is killed
5th: Minister Fudge assures the (muggle) PM that all is well, despite what he may have heard (taken from intro of 6th book)
6th: Snape makes the Unbreakable vow

And so forth...

Assuming Gilliam only directs the first installment, who might be picked to adapt the other six? I like what Alfonso Curon did for the third film, and the following got the offer to direct at one point in the series:

Steven Spielberg
Jonathan Demme
Wolfgang Petersen
Rob Reiner
M. Night Shyamalan
Peter Weir
Guilermo del Torro
Kenneth Branagh
Marc Foster
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Mira Nair
Matthew Vaughn

 

[THE OBSERVER]

I love Cuaron too. Wish he directed more films of Harry Potter. But if he did, we probably wouldn't have gotten Children of Men or Gravity.

 

[DAv]

Knowing Gilliam's luck, the set would burn down, the master copy of the film would be lost and half the cast would get the Norovirus. If he manages to get at least two or three of the films, I can the themes feeling better put together in some ways, like his age trilogy.

 

[THE OBSERVER]

Knowing Gilliam's luck, the set would burn down, the master copy of the film would be lost and half the cast would get the Norovirus. If he manages to get at least two or three of the films, I can the themes feeling better put together in some ways, like his age trilogy.

I'm sure he would laugh at that quote. Seriously. You forgot to mention the executive meddling.