Steve Kloves

J.K. Rowling may have written the book, but Hollywood decided to go with someone else when it was time to pen the screenplay. Sorry, Jo. You can't make all the magic, can you?

Steve Kloves is the lucky guy who got to take the world of Harry Potter from the page to the big screen…by first taking it to another page. Kloves started out as a screenwriter and director who had success with the movie The Fabulous Baker Boys. He'd also had experience adapting novels when he wrote the screenplay for Wonder Boys, which was based on a book by Michael Chabon.

But Harry Potter wasn't just a sleeper hit or a one-off adaptation. This was a potential blockbuster movie franchise based on a beloved bestselling series of novels. These had to be perfect. After Kloves wrote the screenplay for Sorcerer's Stone (and it grossed $317 million), he'd achieved his goal. He stayed on for every single Harry Potter film except Order of the Phoenix. Yeah, we know it's hard to believe but maybe there is such a thing as too much Harry Potter.

Throughout the process, Kloves worked super close with J.K. Rowling and even got to find out all kinds of inside information before it was made public. Based on conversations he had with Rowling, Kloves said he always suspected that Snape was a good guy. And that Dumbledore was gay. (The moral of this story? Screenwriters have all the fun.)

Rowling also helped keep Kloves on track even when he didn't know what was ahead in future books. For example, while Kloves was writing Chamber of Secrets, he didn't have all that much Dobby in the movie initially. J.K. Rowling told him to go back in and include more of the house-elf because he would become important in later movies. Check out Deathly Hallows: Part 1 if you don't believe us.

Working on the Harry Potter series obviously didn't totally wear Steve Kloves out. His next two projects were the screenplays for The Amazing Spider-Man and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.