Chris Columbus feared he would be fired from Harry Potter

Chris Columbus feared he would be "fired" from the 'Harry Potter' franchise.

The 62-year-old director helmed the first two movies in the adaptations of J.K. Rowling's wizardry novels, 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' and 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets', and he felt that he was under massive pressure to get the project right.

Chris said: "The reality is the pressure of the world was upon us, and on me particularly because I knew if I screwed this one up it's all over. You can't screw up this book.

"So I had to go to the set every day with sort of tunnel vision in terms of not thinking, and that was a lot easier 19 years ago before the internet blew up."

Chris, whose previous credits include 'Home Alone' and 'Mrs. Doubtfire', revealed that he was full of nerves throughout the production.

He explained: "The first film was fraught with anxiety for me. The first two weeks I thought I was gonna get fired every day. Everything looked good, I just thought if I do one thing wrong, if I f*** up, I'm fired. And that was intense.

"I didn't let any of that show on the set, there was no frustration, I'm not a screamer, I get along with everybody and I want everybody to feel like they're part of the family, so I just had to hide that side of my emotions."

Chris also recalled that an early screening of the movie in Chicago was nearly three hours long.

He told Collider: "By the time we finished the film and screened it in Chicago, the audience loved it. The audience just ate up the film.

"The film was two hours and fifty minutes long at that point and the kids thought it was too short and the parents thought it was too long."