Last week, rumors surfaced about ‘Gravity’ director Alfonso Cuaron returning to the wizarding world of Harry Potter to direct the spinoff ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them’. News broke that the filmmaker behind ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ was “deep in talks” to fill the position, but now it appears that those reports were a bit premature.
According to the latest comments from the man himself made in an interview with Spanish news agency EFE, Cuaron stated that he wasn’t really looking to do anything involving a good bit of visual effects for a while after spending an extended amount of time doing that for his award-winning film starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Here’s what he had to say about potentially returning to the world that he had a large hand in creating on the silver screen:
“I have a lot of love for that universe and I tremendously admire J.K. Rowling, but today, for the present, projects based around lots of visual effects don’t attract me. I’m coming out of a five-year process of doing visual effects and now I sort of want to clean my palate of that a little bit.”
Obviously, ‘Fantastic Beasts’ will feature quite a bit of visual effects, so that rules out that project as his next film. But what’s next then for Cuaron? Apparently nothing at the moment, despite rumors that he’s also being connected to the prequel of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ titled ‘The Overlook Hotel’. While he is a big fan of the film, he says that “he’s not up to date with the news” listing him as a potential director of that movie and he plans on taking it easy for a while:
“My near-term plans over the coming months are to take my kids to school and plan what I’m going to do this summer with them. Now, I’m once again connecting with life, I have no plans of any kind.”
It appears that the Academy Award winner is enjoying some much deserved time off and chances are that whenever he choose his next project, it likely won’t be part of a franchise as big as ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘The Shining’. However, as is usually the case in this business, anything can happen and you never know who could say the right thing to Cuaron to board either one of these upcoming films.
Are you disappointed that Alfonso Cuaron isn’t planning on directing ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them’? Are there any other directors that you have in mind for the Harry Potter spinoff? Sound off in the comments below.
‘Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them’ apparates into theaters on November 18, 2016.