Terry Gilliam has described his relief at being rejected as director of the first Harry Potter feature adaptation, saying studio control would have prevented him from being able to act like a "suicide bomber".

"That was one of my lucky moments," he told Total Film magazine. "I would have gone crazy. It's a fucking factory, working on Harry Potter. It is. The studios are staking everything on the success of those movies."

Gilliam, who directed Jabberwocky, Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, was reportedly author JK Rowling's first choice to direct a movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2000, but Warner Bros went with Chris Columbus instead. Columbus also directed the second film, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

In 2006, Gilliam called Columbus's movies "shite", although he described Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as "really good". Mike Newell directed 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, while David Yates took over for the last four of the eight movies. The seventh novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is being adapted into two movies, currently being shot back-to-back.

Gilliam maintains that the financial expectations attached to the enterprise would have been artistically stifling for him. "It was way too expensive," he says now. "Too much at stake. So they [the studio bosses] interfere. It's about serving something higher than yourself. It's the film. The film is God and I'm worshipping … While I'm making it I become a zealot. Basically, I'm like a suicide bomber when it comes to my films!"