Just a few days ago, HBO confirmed that it had officially begun filming on its Harry Potter TV show, adapted from the books by J.K. Rowling. It celebrated with a picture of child actor Dominic McLaughlin dressed up as Harry himself, complete with glasses and Hogwarts robes. And I assume there's a lightning bolt-shaped scar under those bangs.
Today, photos from the set are starting to leak. I don't want to embed them here in case Warner Bros. Discovery is feeling litigious, but you can check them out on the Wizarding World Direct X page. They're from a shoot at the penguin enclosure at the London Zoo. If you've read the Harry Potter books, that should ring a bell. There's a scene in the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, where Harry and his hateful family visit the zoo. Harry, who is already displaying an aptitude for magic, finds himself able to talk to a snake. The scene was already adapted in the first Harry Potter movie from 2001, where Daniel Radcliffe played the young wizard:
There's nothing huge to report about the set pictures themselves: McLaughlin is playing Harry Potter, he's wearing glasses, and he's at the zoo. I'm a tiny bit surprised to see that the crew actually decided to shoot in a real zoo given that they've gone to the trouble of building huge sets for things I'd figure they would film on location, like Harry's childhood home at Number Four Privet Drive. So the show won't be shot entirely on man-made sets after all.
The cast and crew have a lot of filming ahead of them. We've heard that shooting on season 1 may last around 10 months, which is a long time; the show is reportedly taking it slow so as not to run afoul of child labor laws, which will be a concern on a set with so many child actors. That all means that we won't be watching the first season of this show until 2027. Again, that's a long time; HOWEVER, we've heard that HBO intends to film seasons of this show back to back, so although we won't be see anything for a while, once the show kicks off, we'll hopefully get a new season every year, without the huge gaps that have plagued modern prestige dramas.
The idea with this series is to adapt the Harry Potter books in more detail than the movies did. The idea is also to make WBD aircraft carriers full of cash. Will they get what they want? Standby.
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