Way back when Harry Potter was just a burgeoning British book series with no international presence, Warner Bros. made the spectacular call of buying the film rights to the series for $2 million. We all know this, and it hasn’t done J.K. Rowling’s bank balance any harm in the long run, but as far as anyone knew that was the whole story of Harry’s first trip to Hollywood.

However, it has now emerged that Dreamworks was approached by Warner Bros. as a potential Potter partner (try saying that with a mouthful of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans), and that the two studios nearly jumped into bed together when Steven Spielberg was briefly considered as director of the franchise. What’s more, Stevie had some ideas for the films which now seem more radical than a Death Eater shacking up with a Muggle – most notably, he wanted to condense the books into four or five films (rather than the eight which have been produced) and ANIMATE THEM ALL.

Can you imagine it? If we could reclaim the millions of man-hours which our species has wasted on staring at Emma Watson over the last decade, we could probably have averted the global financial crisis.