Why Steven Spielberg never directed Harry Potter… or James Bond
The filmmaker looks back on two huge franchises in which he was very close to participating.
Despite his enormous impact on popular culture, Steven Spielberg has never participated in a major saga that he did not initiate. He’s never directed a Star Wars or Marvel movie. Not even a James Bond or a Harry Potter. And yet, it came very close…
Invited by TCM, the filmmaker told the story behind the scenes of a missed meeting with the little magician with the scar. Spielberg explains that he was initially in the running to direct the first Hogwarts film in the franchise. But he ended up walking away from the project for a personal reason linked to the memory of Stanley Kubrick. After the director’s death, Kubrick’s family asked him to take over a project that the latter wanted to see completed, AI Artificial Intelligence. As he tells it, he then chose to prioritize this commitment:
“After he died, I was at his funeral at his house…Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan asked me to take over the film as Stanley had planned. And I had to choose. I actually gave up on Harry Potter, which I was supposed to direct as my next film.”
This is how Chris Colombus took over the first two films in the magical saga. An assumed choice, even if it already measured the extent of the phenomenon in preparation: “I knew that Harry Potter was going to become a huge film, given the phenomenon of JK Rowling’s books. But I chose.“
Steven Spielberg explains why he walked away from directing the first Harry Potter film, so he could take over filming AI: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE from Stanley Kubrick.
See the film tonight as the director joins us for an evening of his films. pic.twitter.com/5TgSCf3Mn4
— TCM (@tcm) June 9, 2026
The other great hero he almost directed in the cinema was James Bond. After the success of Jawsthe young Steven Spielberg tried his luck directly with the producer of the time, Cubby Broccoli. He says this week in a podcast:
“I said to him, ‘If you need a director, I’d love to make a James Bond!’ He told me no.“
A few years later, with more baggage and a host of successes, the filmmaker tried his luck once again with the bosses of 007. Without further success:
“He told me no again. They always told me no in fact…”
The director says he never understood this refusal, despite his successive successes. And today, he says he would say no if Amazon came looking for him:
“If someone had asked me today to do a James Bond film, I would say: you can’t afford to hire me!
