Chris Columbus wants to direct a Harry Potter movie that fills in the 19-year gap

At the end of the Harry Potter saga (both the books and the movies), the story jumps forward 19 years to show our heroes as hideous old people who have all paired off and had children with more or less the characters you expected them to. To most people, this was just pure, uncut fan service, meant to reward everyone who wanted to see these beloved wizards with more wrinkles on their foreheads and more sadness in their eyes. Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter movies, isn’t most people, though. When he saw the epilogue, he realized that there were probably 19 years worth of wonderful adventures that these crusty geezers went on, and he wants to be the one to tell those stories.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Columbus confessed that he would “love to go back and do another [movie],” but only if it’s about the main cast of characters and set after the end of the final book. He also says that he’s “fascinated about what happened to them,” because apparently his imagination has better ideas than “they got older.” Unfortunately, though, Columbus hasn’t talked about this with J.K. Rowling, whose input would be pretty important in making this happen. He says he respects her too much to ask her about it, and that “she should do what she wants to do.”

Oh well. At least we’ll always have this totally necessary scene: