Alfonso Cuaron Will Not Direct HARRY POTTER Spinoff
Last week we heard that Gravity and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban director Alfonso Cuarón was in talks to direct the Harry Potter spinoff film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Shortly after, news hit that Warner Bros. had offered him the directing gig for their Shining prequel, The Overlook Hotel. It looks like that may be the project he ends up directing next. In a recent interview with Global Post, Cuaron says that he will be passing on the Potter film, and he explains why,
"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."
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is based on J.K. Rowling's reproduction of a textbook owned by Harry Potter. The film will follow the adventures of the book's fictitious author, Newt Scamander. His story will start in New York seventy years before Harry's story begins. It will be the first in a planned trilogy, and it's set to be released on November 18th, 2016.
There's still no official confirmation of Cuarón committing himself to The Overlook Hotel, but I hope he takes it!