Daniel Radcliffe Was Pitched a Wizard of Oz Remake With a Karate-Kicking Cowardly Lion — and He Said No at Age 14

NEED TO KNOW

During the height of the Harry Potter franchise, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint were pitched a Wizard of Oz remake with Watson as Dorothy and Radcliffe as a karate-kicking Cowardly Lion.
Radcliffe, who was just 14 or 15 at the time, immediately recognized the pitch as a bad idea, calling it “one of the worst” he’s ever heard.
The story surfaced during Radcliffe’s recent Hot Ones appearance, where he was promoting his Broadway show and new NBC comedy series.

Hollywood has given us some truly unhinged ideas over the decades. But somewhere, buried in the archives of unmade cinematic disasters, sits a pitch so audacious, so baffling, so utterly misguided that even a teenager could spot the problem. That teenager? Daniel Radcliffe.

While appearing on the latest episode of Hot Ones — the hot-wing interview show that has a remarkable talent for loosening celebrity lips — Radcliffe pulled out a story that will live rent-free in pop culture’s head for a very long time. The subject: a proposed Wizard of Oz remake starring the entire Harry Potter trio. Yes, that means him, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. Together. In Oz.

The pitch came during the peak of the Harry Potter franchise, when the trio was essentially the most famous group of young actors on the planet. Apparently, someone decided the best use of that collective star power was to follow the yellow brick road.

The Lost City Screening — London, UK. Daniel Radcliffe at UK Special Screening of “The Lost City” at Cineworld Leicester Square. 31st March 2022. (Photo by Gary Mitchell/Landmark Media
WWW.LMKMEDIA.COM.)

“One of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard, during Potter, somebody came to us and I think asked, like they wanted to cast all three of us, me, Emma and Rupert, in a remake of Wizard of Oz, where Emma was Dorothy,” Radcliffe recalled.

So far, sure. Watson, as Dorothy, isn’t the most unhinged leap of creative logic. But then it gets weird.

“I can’t remember what Rupert was, and I just remember that I was going to be the lion, but also he knew karate,” Radcliffe continued.

Read that again. The Cowardly Lion. Who knew karate?

New York Special Screening Of 'Merrily We Roll Along' — Daniel Radcliffe attends the Sony Pictures Classics and The Cinema Society host Special New York Screening of ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ on December 1, 2025. Photo Credit: Marion Curtis/StarPix for Sony Pictures Classics/INSTARimages

“I was a karate kicking Cowardly Lion. And I remember I was like 14 or 15, and I was like, ‘I don’t know a lot about the world, but this is a bad idea and it should not be made,'” Radcliffe said.

It takes a special kind of terrible idea to make a 14-year-old — who, by his own admission, didn’t know that much about the world yet — instinctively recoil. And yet, here we are. Radcliffe had the wisdom of a seasoned studio exec at an age when most of us were still figuring out how lockers worked.

The Hot Ones appearance was part of a broader press push for Radcliffe ahead of his Broadway return in Every Brilliant Thing and the premiere of his new NBC comedy The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins, which debuts February 23. He’s clearly in a reflective mood — and thankfully so, because this anecdote is a gift to the internet.

It’s worth noting that the Harry Potter trio’s on-screen collaborations began with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 2001 and wrapped with The Deathly Hallows — Part 2 in 2011. Their only reunion since has been the nostalgic special Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts, which streamed in January 2022 on HBO Max. A karate-Oz adventure was not, needless to say, the reunion anyone got.

For what it’s worth, the world of Oz has been kept quite busy without them. The Wicked two-parter starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo recently pulled in over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, so clearly the appetite for all things Oz is real. Whether a martial-arts-infused Cowardly Lion would have cracked that number is, thankfully, a question that will never be answered.

Los Angeles Premiere Of Paramount Pictures The Lost City — WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – MARCH 21: English actor Daniel Radcliffe arrives at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Paramount Pictures’ ‘The Lost City’ held at the Regency Village Theatre on March 21, 2022 in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, United States. (Photo by Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency)

Meanwhile, Radcliffe has been generous in his transition away from the Harry Potter legacy. As filming for the new Harry Potter reboot series begins, with Dominic McLaughlin stepping into the role of Harry, Radcliffe wrote his successor a note saying, “I hope you have the best time, and an even better time than I did — I had a great time, but I hope you have an even better time.” He also made clear he didn’t “want to be a specter in the life of these children.”

Growth. Maturity. Grace. All qualities the Cowardly Lion technically lacked — though apparently, in the unmade 2000s version, he would have compensated with roundhouse kicks.