![]() And with a script written by Steve Kloves, the screenwriter behind Wonder Boys, Warner Bros invited prospective directors -Columbus, Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters), Bard Silberling (City of Angels) and Terry Gilliam (12 Monkeys) - to audition for the job. Rowling's four Potter books have sold more than 100 million copies.įor most of 1999, Steven Spielberg had considered directing the Philosopher's Stone, opting at the last minute to take on the unfinished Stanley Kubrick movie, A.I. He has now agreed to direct all seven Potter novels and has moved with his family to London. If you're film isn't going to do that, I just don't think it's worth making.'Įven with a string of hits, in Hollywood terms Columbus still seemed a controversial choice to helm the Potter franchise. In 1993 he said: 'I can understand the validity of showing people the ugliness of the world, but I also think there is a place for movies to leave people with a sense of hope. He certainly shows little of the directorial or narrative flair associated with other young mavericks like Quentin Tarantino and Sean Penn. In an industry overwhelmed by focus groups, Columbus can occasionally sound defensive of his audience-friendly and almost neighbourly directing style. Witness acceptable comedies such as the Robin Williams comedy Mrs Doubtfire, as well as 1999's hideous Christmas release, Bicentennial Man, which Columbus produced. And his career indicates an inclination to bank on surefire subjects that break the all-important opening weekend box office records.Ĭolumbus has established himself as a director whose only desire seems to be to gratify Mom and Pop audiences in Middle America. Columbus is regarded as an affable and undemanding, if sometimes shy, presence on set and in company. With the two Home Alone films, Columbus has shown that he is a director with few sociological leanings -and certainly none of the reckless box office abandon that often characterise the works of such contemporaries as Tim Burton ( Planet of the Apes ) and Bryan Singer ( The Usual Suspects, The X-Men ). It has taken nearly $300 million worldwide, and there has been just one sequel, the hit Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, which Columbus also directed. The film introduced Macaulay Culkin, the most successful child star since Shirley Temple, and was the highest grossing comedy of that year. But it was the first of three collaborations with writer/director John Hughes (driving force behind teen movies Weird Science and Ferris Bueller's Day Off ) for 1990's Home Alone, which secured Columbus's elevation to the ranks of the Hollywood élite. He directed his first feature, Adventures in Babysitting, in 1987 to lukewarm reviews. And more importantly, typical of the kind of feelgood movie that provides the backbone of Columbus's work as a writer, producer and director. Gremlins was a blend of violent slapstick and moral decency. In Gremlins, and as a homage to Frank Capra, Columbus imagined a small town (Kingston Falls) where miniature green monsters run amok after mutating from cuddly pets, using the fantasy horror premise to illustrate the gradual extinction of American suburbs and of the ordinary man (James Stewart's George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life ). This partnership produced 1984's phenomenally successful Gremlins - inspired by the liberal sentiments of one of Columbus's favourite films, It's a Wonderful Life. It was well received and led to a spell writing original scripts for Steven Spielberg. ![]() After graduating, Columbus penned a small-town drama based on his experiences as a part-time factory worker. ![]() Later he enrolled on the directors program at New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. At high school, he began making 8mm films and drawing his own storyboards - something he continues to do for his films today. Īs a youngster, Columbus wanted to draw cartoons for Marvel Comics, little realising how similar comic books are to movie storyboards - the building blocks of every film director. He was first inspired to make movies at the age of 15 after watching The Godfather. Columbus was born in Spangler, Pennsylvania, in 1958 but was brought up in Youngstown, Ohio, where his father was a coalminer.
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