Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) on Netflix

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

• The three young leads were each set an essay to write about their characters. Emma's ran ten pages and Daniel's was exactly two, while Rupert did not deliver one at all, explaining: "I'm Ron; Ron wouldn't do it."
• Ian McKellen was offered Dumbledore first but turned it down, having played a similar character in Gandalf, and felt it would be inappropriate to take Harris' role after Harris had called him a "dreadful" actor. Christopher Lee was also considered, and later said it would have been in very "bad taste".
• Michael Gambon took the role after Richard Harris, who played Dumbledore in the previous two films, died of Hodgkin's disease on 25 October 2002, three weeks before the second film's release. Despite his illness, Harris had told a visiting David Heyman not to recast the role.
• Aunt Marge's inflation was done practically. Pam Ferris wore various prosthetic bodies that inflated at different rates and was "about four and a half feet wide" at her largest; the 50 lb costume stopped her walking and eating, and thirty-eight tweed suits of increasing size were used.
• Harris' family had hoped his close friend Peter O'Toole would replace him, but the producers worried about O'Toole's age and health, and O'Toole turned the role down himself, feeling that it did not feel right to step into his friend's shoes.
• Robin Williams was interested in playing Professor Lupin but was turned down under the production's "British only" cast rule. David Thewlis, the director's first choice, accepted on the advice of Ian Hart, who had been cast as Quirrell and told him Lupin was "the best part in the book".
• Guillermo del Toro was approached to direct but had envisioned a more Dickensian version of the stories, and was put off by the first two films, which he found too "bright and happy and full of light".