Is Potter Gilliam's Next Disaster?

By Josh Tyler: 2006-05-08 00:00:00

If you're British and you're a director, or have ever been vaguely associated with anything British, there's a good chance you'll at some point be rumored to be directing the next Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The latest guy having his name thrown about his ex-Python and 12 Monkeys director Terry Gilliam.

The rumor has been everywhere by now, but as near as we can tell with the limited low-budget resources of Cinema Blend's newsroom the whole thing originated in an interview Terry did with Entertainment Weekly in September. During the interview, Terry bashed Chris Columbus and then I think he intimated that maybe Harry Potter was entirely his idea. I'm not exactly sure. You be the judge. He "was reading the script as I was flying to Los Angeles for the Warner Bros meeting and thought, 'Oh, she's seen Time Bandits, she's seen Monty Python," says Terry G. Then just to prove he's got his head screwed on straight he added, "I mean, Chris Columbus' versions are terrible. Just dull. Pedestrian. But I thought Alfonso Cuaron did a great job with the last one. I thought, 'Yeah, you got really close to it'."

But that was an interview from way back in September. An interview in which he said, "You know you're not going to get the job. It's just to keep her happy - due diligence." Terry doesn’t think he'll get the job, he was just reading the script. Why all the heat on this rumor now? No idea. Perhaps Warner Bros. is getting closer to picking a director and wanted to get people talking about Potter, or perhaps someone decided to recycle old information to start a fresh rumor.

Either way, Gilliam's a weird choice to direct anything, let alone Harry Potter. He's a brilliant mind and a guy with a few really great movies under his belt. But he's also a guy whose films tend to drown in disaster. For every great movie he's made, Terry makes two flops, or spends millions trying to make a movie that never actually gets made. Handing a franchise like Harry Potter to an unpredictable force like Terry would be a ridiculous gamble for Warner Bros, and one they have absolutely no reason to take. Honestly, hiring Terry Gilliam is like volunteering your film to be randomly squashed by a viciously catapulted wooden rabbit. It's kind of like flushing money down the toilet. Seriously folks, Terry's last film, Tideland hasn't even been able to get distribution. It's so bad, that it's sitting on a shelf and rotting because no respectable studio wants to be associated with it. I doubt that's what the WB has planned for one of their biggest cash cows.

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