Steven Spielberg is responsible for directing some of the best and biggest blockbusters of his time, but many movie fans may not know that he was supposed to helm the first Harry Potter movie. However, Spielberg has explained that he had given up leading the fantasy adaptation to fulfill the dying wishes of his friend and fellow movie legend Stanley Kubrick.
When Kubrick passed away in 1999, he was partway through bringing sci-fi drama AI: Artificial Intelligence to the screen. But after Kubrick's death, Spielberg felt he had to take the project on at that very moment. "After [Stanley Kubrick's] death, I was at the funeral at his home. Christiane [Kubrick] and Jan Harlan, her brother, approached me about taking over from Stanley, as Stanley had intended, and directing the movie," explains Spielberg in an interview with TCM.
