11 Unmade Movie Adapatations That Were Just Weird

Thanks to the success of the books, JK Rowling had a lot of creative control when it came to Harry Potter movies, ensuring that the scripts didn’t conflict with the unpublished books (well, that much), and demanding an all-British cast. But before the wheels were fully in motion for the series, Steven Spielberg was at the helm with some very different ideas.

The biggest thing that set the Spielberg version apart from the Warner Bros adaptations was that Spielberg wanted to make the film a CGI cartoon. Something that was understandable considering the fantasy content, but would have been pretty jarring when it came to the darker content of the last few books. It certainly would have taken a bit of the sting out of the Cruciatus Curse.

Spielberg also wanted to cast American child actor Haley Joel Osment as the voice of Harry, and in a move that can only be described as hilarious more than a decade after the last book was published, wanted to merge elements of the different books together.

Spielberg later left the project, saying that he saw no challenge in it, depriving the world of “Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone In The Chamber Of Secrets”, but paving the way for Harry Potter movies that have aged a lot better than an early noughties CGI version would have.