Alfonso Cuarón Made Harry Potter’s Best Movie After Being Called an ‘Arrogant A—hole’
It probably was the best incentive he could ever receive.
Twenty years after its theatrical release, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is still an undeniable leader of all the surveys that aim to find out which one of Harry Potter’s movies is the best.
The franchise’s third installment is constantly praised for setting the tone to the rest of the films that would come along later. On top of that, Alfonso Cuarón’s directorial vision definitely adds even more of magic to the wizard universe making it all look like a fascinating painting without detracting Chris Columbus’ contribution.
Now that it’s a hard task to imagine Harry Potter’s universe with not a single movie helmed by Cuarón, the director’s recent revelations prove that it could’ve been reality if, ironically, it hadn’t been for Guillermo del Toro.
Though now Cuarón is one of the most proclaimed directors of Mexican descent who over the years has taken home two Academy awards for Best Director (for the record, it’s more than Martin Scorsese has), back in the day he couldn’t boast of such merits and wasn’t even sure he would ever do something like this.
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A breakout opportunity came in Cuarón’s way in the early 2000s, but in quite an unexpected form: the director was offered to helm Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the next installment based on J.K. Rowling’s third book of the same name.
As it turned out, Alfonso Cuarón was far from ever considering himself a Harry Potter fan as he had never got familiar neither with the book series nor with the first two films before he was offered the job.
In one of his recent interviews the director admitted that he’d been very confused as he’d never seen this coming, especially given that back in the day he didn’t have a lot of successful flicks under his belt. Cuarón then revealed that he’d felt a need to pour his heart out to Guillermo del Toro, another proclaimed Mexican director and Alfonso Cuarón’s friend.
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When Harry Potter’s director explained the whole bizarre situation that had happened to him, del Toro was more than surprised to hear that Cuarón had never read any of Harry Potter’s books and eventually called him “in very florid lexicon, in Spanish, […] an arrogant a—hole”.
Funnily enough, del Toro’s harsh criticism towards Cuarón’s lack of pop culture knowledge came as the biggest motivation for the latter to start perusing the books while preparing for the movie production.
Should we now admit that Guillermo del Toro is partially responsible for giving us a gift of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? Most likely, yes.
Source: Total Film