Three-time Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg recently admitted that he doesn’t regret turning down the chance to work on “Harry Potter.”
The 76-year-old Hollywood mainstay could have been part of the successful franchise based on the best-selling books, but he says he chose time with his family instead.
Spielberg told “RRR” director S.S. Rajamouli that the first “Harry Potter” installment was one of many films he turned down when his children were young. The “Jaws” director says he made the right choice.
“There were several films I chose not to make,” Spielberg said while promoting the release of his semi-autobiographical film, “The Fabelmans,” in India. “They offered me ‘Harry Potter’ and I chose to turn down the first ‘Harry Potter’ to basically spend the next year and a half with my family, my young kids growing up.”
“So, I sacrificed a great franchise — which today looking back I’m very happy to have done — to be with my family,” he continued.
“Kate [Capshaw] and I started raising a family and we started having children,” Spielberg continued. “The choice I had to make in taking a job that would move me to another country for four or five months where I wouldn’t see my family every day.”
He went on to say that his family often came along to make big-budget films overseas throughout his career, like when they all moved to Poland for four and a half months while filming the Oscar-winning drama “Schindler’s List.”
The first and second movies in the franchise, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (2001) and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (2002), were both directed by Chris Columbus.
Spielberg has seven children total (one is his stepchild).
The award-winning director previously spoke about turning down the “Harry Potter” franchise, saying his kids didn’t necessarily agree with that decision.
“I just felt that I wasn’t ready to make an all-kids movie, and my kids thought I was crazy. And the books were by that time popular, so when I dropped out, I knew it was going to be a phenomenon,” he told Digital Spy in 2012.