‘It Still Keeps Me Up At Night,’ One Harry Potter Moment That Still Haunts Director Chris Columbus Years Later

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Chris Columbus deserves his flowers for being the original director of the first two Harry Potter movies. But not all directors can make their own movies exactly the way they hoped they would. In the case of Columbus, he reveals one Harry Potter moment that “still keeps me up at night” years later.

With an HBO Original Harry Potter TV series underway, Chris Columbus expressed to RadioTimes how “envious” he was not to be involved in the upcoming show. Previously, the American director believed the HBO adaptation was a “fantastic” idea to include book material that was left out of the movies. For example, Columbus got real about one moment that didn’t make it to the final cut of the franchise that “still keeps me up at night,” involving a missing Harry Potter character:

There was so much we couldn’t put in the films – they weren’t short, they were over two and a half hours long, but I still struggled. It still keeps me up at night sometimes. I missed the fact that I was never able to put Peeves in the first film.

Ah, Peeves. You’d have to be a fan of the books to know what Chris Columbus is talking about. The excluded film character was a troublesome poltergeist featured in all of the books, who caused playful mischief to Hogwarts students. I could picture him being a ghost that was as much a fan-favorite as Moaning Myrtle or Nearly Headless Nick.

But as much as the Home Alone director wished he could have included Peeves, his reasoning for cutting him out was that the movie was close to three hours already. What’s even more heartbreaking about the situation is that actor Rik Mayall already filmed his scenes as the completely CGI character, but ultimately didn’t appear in any of the movies. As Columbus said, the deleted footage still exists somewhere; hopefully, it’ll resurface one of these days for audiences to see the scrapped film character.

Peeves wasn’t the only thing that Chris Columbus “beat himself up” over for the Harry Potter movies. In The Sorcerer’s Stone, the Young Sherlock Holmes writer wished for the effects of the Quidditch scenes to look better. But in his defense, it was a learning experience to visualize how the Wizard World sports game looked based on the book’s descriptions. But fortunately, Columbus was happy with how the Quidditch scenes turned out in The Chamber of Secrets.

As much as we love the Harry Potter movies, a TV series opens up an excellent opportunity for fans to receive a faithful adaptation of the book series that started it all. Book characters that didn’t get enough screentime in the original films, like Ginny, could be fleshed out, as well as characters, like Peeves, who were non-existent.

More of the book’s scenes and subplots could come to life compared to anything being skipped or condensed. With ten hours of each book being adapted, that should be plenty to explore every chapter without losing the heart that made the series so beloved.

It may keep Chris Columbus “up at night” knowing his much-loved Harry Potter character, Peeves, couldn’t be included in the fantasy film series. However, I’d like to believe the streaming series will bring in the menacing poltergeist for this generation of audiences to love. You can expect to find the upcoming TV series hitting your HBO Max subscription in early 2027.