Chris Columbus, the director of the first two films
Harry Potter films that brought the series together, recently revealed a few tidbits about the first movie,
Sorcerer's Stone, how he and J.K. Rowling met for the first time before he got the job, and his hope that Peeves' deleted scene (who had a over-sized head and looked like a leprechaun) will one day be released for the world to see.
To listen to Columbus' interview, skip over to about 30 minutes into the podcast below. The late actor and comedian Rik Mayall was cast as Peeves for the first movie and did shoot the scene, even though it has yet to be made public.
Quote:
Chris Columbus: “We needed to cut something because the film was close to three hours. He was going to be a completely CGI character and that saved us a considerable amount of money, but also created a considerable amount of heartbreak.”
“The footage exists so there’s the potential that someday we could put it back together if people really were that interested.”
Columbus mentioned that he regrets not keeping the one of the challenges for Harry, Ron and Hermione at the end of the first book, where Hermione figures Snape's potions out to move on to find the
Sorcerer's Stone. It was in the original script, but cut from the final shooting script written by Steven Kloves. Both
Sorcerer's Stone and
Chamber of Secrets took about 160 days to shoot.
The director, who did not helm the third movie,
Prisoner of Azkaban, but stayed on as a producer, commented on how he envisioned bringing Hagrid to life, and felt that Gamekeeper should have been much bigger on screen.
Quote:
Columbus: “I always thought Hagrid should be a little bigger. Believe it or not, we didn’t have the resources or the money to actually create a CGI version of Hagrid for the first couple of films, so we had a rugby player in a gigantic Hagrid suit who worked in the wide shots for us. He was actually walking there with the kids, and then we did forced perspective sets for Robbie (Coltrane) and created an image of Robbie being much bigger than he was, but I always thought Hagrid should be about two feet taller and about 100 pounds heavier.”
Columbus admitted to having read the
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script book, but hasn't seen the plays yet. He, like so many
Harry Potter fans, would love to know what happened in the 19-year interval between the
Deathly Hallows epilogue, and
Cursed Child's start - and he would love to take that on, possibly, if J.K. Rowling considers venturing into Harry, Ron and Hermione's lives as young adults post Hogwarts Battle.
EW is scheduled to do breakdowns of the rest of the seven movies, and if they do provide new interviews with nifty new details, they will be reported here.
Harry Potter director Chris Columbus teases unseen Peeves scene could surface, more 
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