This series, part of our Forever Young Family & Children’s Series, celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Harry Potter book series.
Director Chris Columbus had a difficult task in recreating the world of HARRY POTTER. But as aesthetically demanding as the production was, Columbus understood that the real magic of the film was the relationship between best friends Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Columbus spoke to Vanity Fair about how he created the chemistry on set for this iconic trio.
He said, “We did a lot of rehearsals… bonding really happened on the set. Remember, each of those movies, at least the first two, were 160-day shoots — the first movie being separated by a week or so from the second movie’s shooting, so we really had no downtime. So that’s a total 320 days that they’re gonna spend together.
When you’re facing that sort of daunting schedule, you don’t have to take them out bowling or play poker with them. They’re gonna be spending enough time together. Ironically, the very first day of actual shooting on SORCERER’S STONE, we shot the final scene at the train station [first], where Harry, Ron, and Hermione sort of say good-bye to Hogwarts. [Producer] David [Heyman] and I looked at each other after the first take, and we both had tears in our eyes because there was such a poignancy in the way Dan delivered his lines. We were kinda blown away… we knew we had our trio on the very first day.”
