The total length of the movie Harry Potter and the Wise stone was 2.5 hours, but that wasn’t enough. For example, the director would have liked a role for the Klopgeest Foppe, who regularly bothered Harry and his friends in the books. Initially Rik Mayall would play the Spirit in the 2001 film, but those scenes were eventually deleted.
Columbus also wanted to have a certain event at the end of the film if the wizard students try to find the stone of the wise. “The first book contains a scene in which Hermione and Harry taste magic drinks in one of the challenges, one of them can die any moment. It is just like the great chess party that we had just before, but we didn’t have time for it anymore.”
Harry Potter series
Although Columbus is not involved in the production of the new Harry Potter series from HBO Max, he hopes that those scenes will come back in it.
“They have ten hours, I hope they will use it well,” he says about the series. “The biggest advantage of a series is the fact that they get ten hours before the first book, something I didn’t get the chance. I am a bit jealous. There was so much that we couldn’t get in the films. They were not short, more than 2.5 hours, but I was struggling with it. I sometimes wake it up.”