Mousetrips has an interesting story about what might have been in Disney-land.
This has been one of those urban legends that has been circulating around the Web for years now. About how some unnamed executive on the publishing side of The Walt Disney Company had had the chance to acquire the rights to J.K. Rowling’s first novel, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” … Only to reject the manuscript because this person thought that the book was too odd or too English.
With the upcoming release of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”, The Walt Disney Company finally has its arms firmly wrapped around a major piece of classic children’s literature. From all early indications, once this Andrew Adamson film is released to theaters on December 9th, the house that Eisner built will finally have something that Michael has been lusting after for 20+ years now: A successful film franchise that’s based on a piece of popular fiction.
This is something that Disney almost had with “The Lord of the Rings.” Only to get cold feet once Peter Jackson and the Weinsteins made Disney’s CEO aware of how much this two part epic was supposed to cost. (Yes, you heard right. Back when Miramax was trying to get a movie version of Tolkien’s epic fantasy made, the Mouse just couldn’t bring itself to pay for production of a trilogy. Which is why Disney execs insisted that Jackson cram all of the action of “The Fellowship of the Rings, “The Two Towers” and “The Return of the King” into two pictures. It was only after Peter took “LOTR” over New Line Cinema that this ambitious film project was allowed to become a trilogy again, with TONS of extra DVD footage. And the rest of the story … You know … ) And as for “Harry Potter” …
What most people don’t know is that not only did the Walt Disney Company miss out on securing the movie rights to the “Harry Potter” book series, but — thanks to an oversight by a recently departed Disney Publishing senior editorial executive — the Mouse House actually missed out on the chance to publish the “Harry Potter” books in the United States and Canada.
Prior to Scholastic agreeing to publish J.K. Rowling’s first novel in the United States and Canada, the Bloomsbury version of the book allegedly came across Ms. Holton’s [Lisa Holton] desk. Which meant that Disney had the opportunity to lock up the North American publishing rights before Scholastic did, for “Philosopher’s Stone” as well as all of the “Harry Potter” books that followed. But this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity vanished into thin air like a puff of smoke when Lisa rejected the book.
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