Alfonso Cuaron, director of Prisoner of Azkaban, gave his view to Newsweek on the Harry Potter films.

Warner Bros. is very brave to have entrusted its $2 billion Harry Potter franchise to a Mexican director best known for a teenage sex movie that makes Ken Park look tame. In Newsweek this week, Alfonso Cuaron, the new director of Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, likens George Bush to evil Voldemort, and says the third Potter movie will have "lots of nudity. And lots of sex."

He was joking. But he does see the movie as an edgy puberty saga, telling The New York Times it is, "an observation of teenagers coming of age, and it's an observation of a country coming of age. There's a lot of coming in the movie." As for Bush and Saddam Hussein, like Voldemort, they have "selfish interests and are very much in love with power", he told Newsweek. "Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people."

The previous two Potter movies were set in a timeless England. But number three, due next year, is all 21st-century grunge, judging by photographs from the set showing the Hogwarts students in dirty tracksuit tops. Actor Daniel Radcliffe has been listening to the Sex Pistols to get in the mood to play Harry. Dumbledore is to be played by a new actor as "an elegant, old hippie".

Cuaron complains his last movie Y Tu Mama Tambien (And Your Mother Too) couldn't get an R-rating until he "cut a bunch of penises". He was "shocked" to be offered Azkaban. "I had just made this sexy, scandalous movie," he said. He has since decided "thematically" the stories are similar.

"But Y Tu Mama deals with class and homosexuality. Doesn't Harry Potter have fewer political overtones?" The New York Times asked.

"No. Harry Potter deals with class, with race, with power. I see this book as a metaphor for our times."

Bloody hell, as Ron would say.