CraveOnline: You’re seen as sort of a super-producer with the Harry Potter movies and Gravity, but We’re the Millers is such an underdog success story. It wouldn’t leave the top five.
David Heyman: I can claim very little credit for that film. I’ve made small films. Yes, I’ve been really fortunate to do I Am Legend and Potters and Gravity, and We’re the Millers is a script I read while I was doing Harry Potter and Yes Man. I loved the script. Absolutely loved it. It made me laugh, like… it was a fantastic script. There was a point when the film was going to be turned around and die a death, and the producer called and said “Can you help?” And I did, and they didn’t put it in turnaround. But that literally was the extent of my involvement. I deserve no credit, though my name is on it, but I’m really proud to have my name on it. I believed in it. I fought for it at an important point. But Rawson Thurber deserves the huge credit.
That’s really reasonable of you, to admit your level of involvement. Are there any other films on your IMDb page on which you didn’t have as much input as maybe it looks like?
[Thinks] I Am Legend. I was very much involved with the genesis of that project. Had the idea with Neal Moritz. We got the rights. We hired Mark Protosevitch to write it. He did a great script.
I read one of his scripts. It was great.
It was really interesting. And then we gave it to Ridley [Scott], and Ridley didn’t want anything to do with my partner. I was partnered with Neal Moritz at the time. Two less likely partners you couldn’t imagine. But Neal remains a very good friend, he was a fantastic partner. But [Scott] didn’t want two young punks involved with the film, and he got Arnold Schwarzenegger involved…
And the budget ballooned…
…and then it never happened. And Akiva Goldsman really deserves the lion’s share of the credit for bringing Will Smith into that. But I was definitely… it wouldn’t have happened without us. So I’m proud of my part in it, but the final film? Really Akiva. Akiva as a producer deserves the lion’s share of the credit.
How long do you think it will be before we get a full reboot, or remake of Harry Potter?
We haven’t talked about it. At the moment there’s the discussion about the new… You know, [J.K. Rowling] is writing a script. She’s just announced Fantastic Beasts.
I’m very excited. Are you still involved in that?
I can’t talk about that. But I think it’s just great. She’s someone who has great pride, and she’s not going to mess it up. She had no need to go back to this universe. It’s not, literally, it’s not Hogwarts and Harry. It’s a different time period. Fantastic Beasts is Newt Scamander, a person who… a Hogwarts class book is about him. So it’s going back in time but she didn’t need to do it, not for financial [reasons], but she loved the world and I think that she just wanted to revisit it. The books, the Potter books, are really just the surface of her knowledge. She has notebook upon notebook filled with stuff! And I think that’s one of the reasons why the books work so well, because they’re so densely, richly conceived. So this I just think is another offshoot of that knowledge of the world.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
