from Scifi Wire
Columbus Relinquishes Potter
Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter movies, told SCI FI Wire that he's not disturbed at all to hear that director Alfonso Cuaron's upcoming Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is being called the best film yet in the series. "Well, no, because then you're really into it for a whole other reason, as opposed to just wanting to make really great films," Columbus said in an interview. "The desire was to just survive the making of Sorcerer's Stone and put the world together and a cast and create the whole world." Columbus produced Prisoner of Azkaban and had a hand in selecting Cuaron to helm.
Columbus added, "The second film [Chamber of Secrets] was a whole lot more fun to make. The kids [Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint] were better as actors. So they were able to get through a couple of lines. Not an entire sequence, but a couple of lines and almost one shot. Then, to see them graduate to this film, it's a wonderful thing. You see these kids doing an entire scene in one shot and you realize, 'My God, they've actually come this far. They're actually professional actors.' So it's a real sense of pride. I love the visual look of the movie. I love the visual style. I love that we improved the visual effects. It was always our goal to make a better film each time out. So had we done anything less, I'd have felt that we hadn't succeeded."
Prisoner of Azkaban marks Columbus' Potter swan song for the moment. Though he's open to directing another Harry Potter film down the line, he is not producing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the upcoming fourth installment, which is in production now in England, with Mike Newell directing. Instead, Columbus is attached to direct a feature version of the Broadway show Rent and will co-produce a big-screen adaptation of The Fantastic Four. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, based on the third of J.K. Rowling's best-selling books, will be released June 4.
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