Harry Potter movies - and trivia

We all know that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 opens this weekend (can't wait!), most of us have seen those great red carpet photos, but have you seen the front page of Sunday’s Los Angeles Times that eatured a Hollywood history of the “Harry Potter“ films.

So did you know that Steven Spielberg was at one point in the mix to guide the Potter films to the screen? "Warner Bros. secured the rights for four “Harry Potter” novels for about $2 million. At that point, only the first book was on shelves in England and none had reached America. Warner Bros. tried to get a financial partner on the project, reaching out to studios including Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks, which passed."

When the books became a sensation, DreamWorks proposed a partnership to make the film, but Horn, president of Warner Brothers, declined. “I did think it would be worthwhile for Steven Spielberg to direct,” Horn said. “We offered it to him. But one of the notions of Dreamworks’ and Steven’s was, ‘Let’s combine a couple of the books, let’s make it animated,’ and that was because ... Pixar had demonstrated that animated movies could be extremely successful ... But I did not want to combine the movies, and I wanted it to be live action.” Spielberg took on “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,” ainstead nd the Hogwarts post fell to Chris Columbus. …

The rest of the article has interviews with Daniel Radcliffe, screenwriter Steve Kloves, Columbus,and many others. Check it out here I'll leave you with this: “I admit it, I did cry like a little girl,” Radcliffe said, recalling the day. “There was a feeling that I had, that we all had, that it was the end of something very special.”