David Fincher almost directed a“ Harry Potter” movie, but wanted to make it 'kind of creepy'

David Fincher is adding his name to the long list of filmmakers who considered journeying to Hogwarts.

That's right — the man that put Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box and recreated the movements of a serial killer in Zodiac nearly took a stab at an early Harry Potter movie a.k.a. one of the titles responsible for welcoming millions of kids into the wizarding world. Except, as Fincher recently explained to Variety, his take on the story would have been very different from the whimsical, childlike wonder that Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets director Chris Columbus leaned into.

"I was asked to come in and talk to them about how I would do Harry Potter," Fincher recalled of his meeting with Warner Bros. “I remember saying, ‘I just don’t want to do the clean Hollywood version of it. I want to do something that looks a lot more like Withnail and I, and I want it to be kind of creepy.’”

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Unfortunately, the studio wasn't too keen about having their Harry Potter movie follow in the footsteps of the 1987 black comedy about two drunken louts waxing poetic in the midst of a drug-addled crisis. Or, as Fincher put it, "They were like, 'We want Thom Browne schooldays by way of Oliver.”

Needless to say, Fincher's version of Harry Potter didn't see the light of day. The Oscar-nominee is in good company though; a slew of acclaimed filmmakers were at some point in contention to helm one of the franchise's entries but declined, dropped out, or otherwise proposed ideas that clashed with the studio or franchise author, J.K. Rowling. Among them are Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, M. Night Shyamalan, Jonathan Demme, Terry Gillam, and Rob Reiner.

Representatives for Fincher did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly's request for further comment.

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This isn't the first time Fincher has recalled having unorthodox ideas for a blockbuster franchise. Just last year, he told The Guardian about his initial pitch for Spider-Man — a project that would eventually go to Sam Raimi, and kick-off Tobey Maguire's cherished run as the web-slinger.

Related: Harry Potter TV show hasn't 'felt any impact' from J.K. Rowling's anti-trans views despite her involvement 

While the 2002 film went the traditional origin story route, Fincher's version would have taken a very different approach by focusing on Peter Parker's life as an adult.

"They weren’t f---ing interested,” Fincher said of the studio's reaction to his pitch. “And I get it. They were like: ‘Why would you want to eviscerate the origin story?’ And I was like: ‘Cos it’s dumb?’ That origin story means a lot of things to a lot of people, but I looked at it and I was like: ‘A red and blue spider?’ There’s a lot of things I can do in my life and that’s just not one of them.”

All that said, Fincher has certainly not shied away from adaptations, taking on such best-selling novels as Gone Girl and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Reflecting on what drew him to each project, Fincher clarified that the pre-existing popularity of such books is merely incidental.

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"Is there a built-in audience? That’s somebody else’s job,” he told Variety. “Those books get sold to movie studios when it’s shown that there’s a built-in audience, so I’m usually coming into the food chain after it’s been decided that this is something tasty. I was interested in Gone Girl in spite of the fact that it was a bestseller."

He continued, "There are different things about stories that resonate with you based on movies you love and the kind of movies that you made. So I don’t know how I choose things to be involved with, but you get a hankering where you go, 'I’d like to see this, and I’d like to see it done this way.'"

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