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The first two movies in the Harry Potter franchise were directed by Chris Columbus, the family-friendly filmmaker behind movies such as Home Alone (and the sequel) and Mrs. Doubtfire. He’s about as far down the other end of the directorial spectrum as Seven and Zodiac director David Fincher, who recently revealed he actually met with Warner Bros. about directing Harry Potter.
Given that David Fincher is known for projects such as Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, Mindhunter, and The Killer, is should perhaps come as no surprise that would have wanted his cinematic adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s best-selling novels to be “kind of creepy.”
According to Fincher, while he pitched something akin to Withnail and I (an obscure British dark comedy from the late 1980s), he says that Warner Bros was looking for something more similar to the 1968 film Oliver!.
“I was asked to come in and talk to them about how I would do Harry Potter,” Fincher told Variety. “I remember saying, ‘I just don’t want to do the clean Hollywood version of it. I want to do something that looks a lot more like Withnail and I, and I want it to be kind of creepy… They were like, ‘We want Thom Browne schooldays by way of Oliver.’”
The idea that the cinematic version of Potter could be a bit creepy certainly isn’t entirely unfounded, as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film in the franchise that’s widely considered to be the series’ standout entry, certainly leans into elements of creepiness.
Prisoner of Azkaban was not directed by Columbus, however, but Alfonso Cuarón, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Y tu mamá también, Children of Men, Gravity, and Roma. The fourth film in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was directed by Mike Newell before the final four movies were helmed by David Yates. A reboot series is currently in the works at HBO and is set to be released in 2026.