Congratulations, Producer David Heyman!
Jan 22, 2016
Fantastic Beasts Movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Heyman Interviews, Honors/Awards, J.K. Rowling
This weekend, David Heyman, producer of the Harry Potter films and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, will be honored with the Producers Guild Awards’ David O. Selznick Achievement Award for his work on the eight Harry Potter films, Gravity, Testament of Youth, and Paddington, among others. In anticipation, Heyman has been interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter for its Jan. 29 issue.
David Heyman is excited to return to the Potterverse with Fantastic Beasts. After all, he got the film rights to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1997, before the book series had become an international phenomenon. When first talking about what to do next, Heyman and producer Lional Wigram hoped to make a mockumentary about Newt Scamander and his work in magizoology, but J.K. Rowling came back with a plan for a more traditional feature film. Heyman says,
Jo Rowling created such an incredibly rich and deeply conceived world. What you read in the books is in some ways just the surface of this world. I’d ask her about the [character Sirius Black’s] family tree because we had to paint it on the wall [for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix], and the book only had two names, and half an hour later I’d receive a family tree going back six generations with 100 people. I’m sure Newt Scamander and his story have been in her mind for many years.
When asked if Fantastic Beasts is designed to be a franchise, Heyman answered conservatively, “We’ve talked about making a couple, but with all these things — and this may be a failing of mine — I don’t look at them as franchises; I look at them as films. We want to make each film as good as we can because if you don’t, you won’t have a second film or a third.”
Congratulations on the David O. Selznick Achievement Award, David Heyman, and thanks for all that you’ve done to bring J.K. Rowling’s books to life on screen!
To read more of the interview, read the Jan. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter, or see here.