21 Wild Facts About "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" That You'll Be Shocked You Didn't Know Sooner

"I needed to get out for my own sanity, so I'd be alive for my children at some point," Columbus told the BBC in 2004.

"It was an amazing amount of pressure for me," Columbus told the BBC of recasting Dumbledore. "Because the last thing that Richard Harris ever said to me was 'Don't ever ****ing think about recasting me!' That was in his hospital room as I was saying goodbye to him."

"Richard was in heavy, heavy costume, he could hardly sit, you know, and I turned up and they put me in two layers of silk, so I played him much lighter — you know, floating around in a pair of slippers, a bit of a hippy," Gambon told the BBC in 2004. "I had a slight Irish accent — because, you know, I am Irish — it sort of just happened. Alfonso asked 'What accent are you using?' and I said 'I'm not sure yet.' So the Irish came out. He said, 'What is that?' I said Irish, and he said he'd never heard it before."

Columbus told The Wrap in 2021 that he and Cuarón met with O'Toole but the actor "felt it was intrusive from an acting point of view so he decided not to do it."

However, the publication reports he "demurred."

A prolific writer, director, and actor, Branagh had already garnered three Oscar nominations at the time, including a Best Director nom for his 1989 film Henry V. (He's since gone on to receive an additional four nominations across acting, directing, writing, and producing categories, including another Best Director nom for his 2021 film Belfast.)

So it's not surprising that he was considered to direct the third Harry Potter film, but he had some stiff competition. As Total Film reported in their 20-year retrospective with Cuarón and longstanding Harry Potter producer David Heyman in May, Branagh was up against Guillermo del Toro and M. Night Shyamalan, among other directors. Ultimately, Cuarón rose to the top.

Cuarón was fresh off directing the steamy and critically acclaimed film Y tu mamá también when Harry Potter came his way. "I was not very aware of Potter's universe and I was surprised to be offered it, coming from Y tu mamá también," he told Total Film. 

"I speak often with Guillermo [del Toro], and a couple of days after, I said, 'You know, they offered me this Harry Potter film, but it's really weird they offer me this.' He said, 'Wait, wait, wait, you said you haven't read Harry Potter?' I said, 'don't think it's for me.' In very florid lexicon, in Spanish, he said, 'You are an arrogant asshole,'" Cuarón told Total Film.

As the longstanding rumor went, each actor ended up mirroring the response their character would likely have had to the assignment. Radcliffe turned in a page, Watson turned in around 16 pages, and Grint didn't do it at all. Grint confirmed the theory to HuffPost in 2016. "It's quite Ron-ish not to do it. I think [Cuarón] kind of appreciated that," he said.

"Because it just changed how people saw us and it changed the perception of what we were trying to do. 'Oh, they're trying to make something different!'" Radcliffe told HuffPost in 2013.

Oldman said on The Drew Barrymore Show in 2023 that he was newly divorced and raising two boys from his marriage to Donya Fiorentino when he joined the film. He is also the father to a son from his previous marriage to actress Lesley Manville.

"I tell you, the two — Batman and Harry Potter — really they saved me, because it meant that I could do the least amount of work for the most amount of money and then be home with the kids," he said. In 2005, Gary Oldman also began appearing as James Gordon in Christopher Nolan's Batman series.

"You have the added responsibility of hoping that you live up to that expectation — I didn't want to disappoint him," Oldman told the BBC in 2004.

"I have to say Dan just focused so hard on a lot of the scenes in this. In one of the scenes that he did, he was so into it that he almost fainted. He was really great," Emma Watson told IGN in 2004.

In response during the interview, Radcliffe said, "I do this like stupid thing where I forget to breathe properly and I hyperventilate."

"When we were in Scotland he peed on me. That wasn't really nice," Grint told the BBC in 2004.

"I kicked the camera on my way into it, accidentally," Grint said in an old interview. "I was fine. The camera was a bit broken, but I was fine."

According to a 2004 New York Post article, they shot with a robot in subsequent scenes. However, Coltrane told the publication the robot "didn't really work," so most of Buckbeak was ultimately CGI.

"I squeezed those words together," Rowling told SFGate in 2019. "The idea of the rock in the middle of the ocean was directly inspired by a visit to Alcatraz."

In the movie, Harry is given a magical map of Hogwarts from George and Fred Weasley. It was created years ago by Harry's father James Potter and James's friends: Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and Remus Lupin. 

Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima of the design team MinaLima created the map for the film. "We didn't want it to be a Treasure Island, burnt edges, whimsical in that sense piece," Mina told EW in 2016. "We thought about who would've created this, so these four characters were very cunning and intelligent and crafty in what they were doing with this map. We went back to look at some reference and I found some lovely, I think it was 17th, 18th century illustrations that were completely made out of words and that idea seemed to fit perfectly with what they might have done as these cheeky characters, as students."

As Oliver told EW in 2018, there are a couple of reasons it's his favorite. "I still remember to this day calling my granddad from the hotel and telling him how it went and everything," Phelps said. His grandfather died before the film was released.

Second, it's the first scene where he got to see and use George's wand. "I remember seeing it and literally just before we started filming, the prop guy gave me the wand and I was looking at this thing and then I just hear, 'Ok, we're rolling.' And I'm like, 'Hang on, hang on, I'm looking at my wand!'" he said.

While it's unclear if this Easter Egg is intentional or not, it's seriously cool to see that the star of the spin-off franchise Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them sort of appears in the film.