Blockbuster director was fired from first Fantastic Four for ‘having too much of an opinion’; delivered Rs 9,000 crore hit that changed cinema

“There were a lot of writers involved. They were about to make a movie and I was producing it. I met with the director and had some ideas. I basically said, ‘Some of this conceptual art should feel more like Jack Kirby, the creator of the Fantastic Four, and should feel more like the Silver Age of Marvel.’ I left that meeting and on the way back from my house I got a call from the head of 20th Century Fox saying I was fired and had too much of an opinion,” recalled Columbus.

Columbus, who always wanted to make a superhero movie, had also lobbied to direct the first Spider-Man (2002), starring Toby Maguire, which was eventually helmed by Sam Raimi. While the exit from Fantastic Four definitely “soured” his ambition a little, he gradually realized there are better directors to helm these superhero movies than him, including Raimi and Matt Reeves.

“It started a little bit with Spider-Man 2 (2004). When I saw what Sam Raimi did with that, I thought it was a perfect superhero movie. Certainly Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022), with Robert Pattinson, was a brilliant film too. I realized I don’t have a desire to make those movies anymore because people are doing them better than I ever could at this point in my career,” confessed Columbus.

Even though he couldn’t get his hands dirty with a superhero franchise, Columbus did helm the first two instalments of one of the most popular and successful movie franchises of all time — Harry Potter. After his daughter persuaded him to read JK Rowling’s books, he realized there’s a “great movie in there.”

After getting the script greenlit from Warner Bros, Columbus had the gargantuan task of casting the titular character, given the unmatched popularity of the books. He spotted Daniel Radcliffe in Simon Curtis’ TV adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1980 seminal novel David Copperfield. But he was told the Radcliffe family doesn’t want Daniel to do anything more with the movies.

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Columbus had to navigate that and managed to eventually convince Daniel’s parents to let him play Harry Potter. “We saw hundreds of tapes. But Daniel had a haunted quality about him, which wasn’t there in others. Harry Potter had lost his parents, so he was also a haunted child,” pointed out Columbus. He directed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), before quitting the franchise which was carried forward by Alfonso Cuaron. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone earned $1.026 billion (approximately Rs 8,985.15 crore).