Could we get a film about the Harry Potter gang as adults?

Whilst promoting his latest film, Pixels, recently, Chris Columbus got to chatting about his time with the Harry Potter films. He directed the first two, and produced one more, but he said that although he’d have liked to direct the whole series, an epic like that would have meant too much time away from his family so he had to decline.

However, what he does think would be fun would be to direct just one more… about those missing years at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two. This last film in the series jumps ahead to 19 years after the main events of the film, to show Harry, Hermione, and Ron middle-aged and with their own children just about to go off to Hogwarts for the first time. What Columbus wants to know is, what happened in between?

“I would love to go back and do another one,” says Columbus. “I would love to do another movie with those three characters — Harry, Hermione, and Ron. I’m just fascinated about what happened to them after the end of the last movie, because then they cut to 18 years ahead. There’s 18 years there of great Harry Potter stories.” (*cough* Actually, there are 19 according to the film’s subtitles, Chris!)

Has he spoken to the original writer of the series, J.K. Rowling, about his ambitions? “I don’t have the courage to actually mention that to her because I have such respect for her,” says Columbus. “She should do what she wants to do, but I really would love to know what’s in her head about those missing years.”

If he’s too nervous to ask J.K. herself, we like to think that Columbus has been happily browsing some Potter fanfic to get some ideas. Who knows, we may see a thinly veiled version of Harry Potter with different names on our screens soon, a la Twilight’s inspiring role in the 50 Shades franchise. Oh, it wasn’t that kind of adult film the director was thinking of?

In the meantime, Rowling has her own ideas about parts of the story she wants to expand.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them started out as one of Harry Potter’s textbooks, mentioned in the first Harry Potter story, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. In 2001, JK wrote a real life version of the book for Comic Relief, under the pseudonym of the author originally mentioned on the spine, Newt Scamander. Now a film of the book of the fictitious textbook is in development—the first of a trilogy. It will be out next year.

If you can’t wait till then, you can always keep up with the Harry Potter actors you’ve grown to know and love in their own various stage plays, and if you want more of a fix, there’s always the Leavesden studio tour, which promises lots of original props, sets and costumes from the films – maybe your best chance for you to act out your own “Harry Potter gang as adults” story idea.

The editorial unit