The biggest problem is the amount of time a multi-picture deal would take him away from other things.
Daniel Radcliffe is forever being fan-cast in big franchises, but since he starred in the eight Harry Potter films, he hasn’t come back to the world of blockbusters. Is that on purpose? Well, not really, according to the star. Speaking in support of his new Netflix series Mulligan, Radcliffe said that he hasn’t avoided big movies, but that the standard is going to be even higher for a script that requires him to block out several years for multiple movies. Since appearing in Harry Potter, Radcliffe has waffled back and forth between indie films like Swiss Army Man and Knives Akimbo and at least slightly more commercial fare like Weird: The Al Yankovic Story and Now You See Me.
“I mean, I’m not really [avoiding them]. There’s been a couple of things that I think people were hoping would turn into franchises that I’ve read over the years that weren’t for me,” Radcliffe told CBR. “There have been some studio films that just have not been for me, but I’ve not been turning down loads of franchises, either. I don’t want to give that impression. I certainly wouldn’t be averse to doing one again.”
“If someone was to come to me and say, ‘We’re going to make [a franchise], we want this to be a minimum of three films,’ it would just mean that the bar for how good those scripts and how good that project would have to be would be even higher than it normally is,” Radcliffe added. “Just because one of the things I love about my career now is that I have a lot of freedom to do lots of different things and if I was going to get stuck into one thing for a very long time again, it would have to be for a very good reason.”
The relatively relaxed way he looks at the queastion lines up pretty nicely with the way he has dealt with the never-ending questions about making a cameo appearance in Max’s forthcoming Harry Potter TV show.
“My understanding is that they’re trying to very much start fresh and I’m sure whoever is making them will want to make their own mark on it and probably not want to have to figure out how to get old Harry to cameo in this somewhere,” Radcliffe recently told ComicBook. “So I’m definitely not seeking it out in any way. But I do wish them, obviously, all the luck in the world and I’m very excited to have that torch passed. But I don’t think it needs me to physically pass it.”
