Daniel Radcliffe is the latest guest on Hot Ones and reveals that one of the worst sales pitches of his career was for the remake of The Wizard of Oz, which was headlined by the trio from the original Harry Potter film series: Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint. This idea was born during the heyday of the Potter movies.
“I think one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard was when we were making ‘Potter’ someone came to us and asked, as if we’d like to cast all three of us, me, Emma and Rupert, in a remake of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ where Emma is Dorothy,” Radcliffe said. “I don’t remember what Rupert was like. All I remember is that he was going to be a lion, but he also knew karate.”
“I was like a cowardly lion kicking karate,” he continued. “And I remember being 14 or 15 and thinking, ‘I don’t know much about the world, but this is a bad idea and we shouldn’t make it.'”
This remake of “The Wizard of Oz” never took off, but Hollywood tried its hand at returning to Oz in 2013 with Sam Raimi’s prequel film “Oz: The Great and Powerful.” James Franco starred in the title role, with Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams, and Rachel Weisz playing the Wizard of Oz. While the film was a moderate success, grossing nearly $500 million worldwide, Oz truly flexed its big screen muscles in 2024 and 2025 with Wicked. The film grossed a total of $1.2 billion worldwide.
As for Radcliffe, he co-starred with Watson and Grint in eight Harry Potter films released between 2001 and 2011. The only time the trio appeared together on screen was in the Potter movies. They reunited on television for “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts,” which streamed on HBO Max in January 2022.
Watch Radcliffe’s full interview on “Hot Ones” in the video below.
