Spielberg’s Fear of Potter

He may be one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, but Steven Spielberg maintains that he's permanently afraid of his movies turning out to be stinkers. 'I'm the fraidy-cat who makes a picture and immediately assumes that nobody is going to show up the first day, and it will be reviled around the world,' Spielberg tells the New York Times. 'Relief is the largest reaction I have to a film that's well received and opens well. I don't celebrate. I don't have victory parties. I simply feel relief.' Given that his last movie, Saving Private Ryan, grossed upwards of $500 million - it seems Spielberg has little to fear from a movie-going public that will flock in their millions to see dismal sequels like The Mummy Returns. But it's the kind of rejection that the director received after The Color Purple that in the end prevented him from taking on the movie many were hoping to see him direct - Harry Potter. "[The Colour Purple] was a film where there was more ink shed on the comparison with the Alice Walker novel than there was on the merits or problems with the film,' explains Spielberg. 'Every kid in the world will be waiting to see how close `Harry Potter' will be to the books," he said. "And if they make it religiously and everybody gives it up to the book, there will be tremendous satisfaction.' 'For me it was like shooting ducks in a barrel. It was a slamdunk. It would have been like drawing up a check for $1bn and putting it into my account.' Asked what he will make next, Spielberg says; 'I have three irons in the fire.' Those three are Memoirs of a Geisha, which Spielberg says he will 'probably' direct, a movie adaptation of Daniel Wallace's novel Big Fish and a film about the final six years of Abraham Lincoln's life.