Anecdotes

Gary Oldman, who played Sirius Black in the film series, expressed interest in playing Dumbledore.

After an open casting call for the roles of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, the crew received over 32,000 audition tapes and reviewed between 500 and 1,000 auditions per day.

In an interview with the Independent, Jared Harris was asked if he would be interested in playing Dumbledore, the role originated by his father Richard Harris in the first two Harry Potter films. The junior Harris responded, "I mean, why do it? I don't understand. The films were fantastic - leave them alone." However, he did acknowledge that there was still "a lot of storytelling" from the books that the films omitted.

Chris Columbus, the director of the first two Harry Potter films, has called the idea 'fantastic', stating that a series gives them the opportunity to include events from the books that couldn't be shown in the films.

In the Shaun et les zombies (2004) commentary in 2005, Nick Frost - now cast as Hagrid - jokes that he's the new Robbie Coltrane, and that he'd play a drug-dealing Hagrid.