The other day, select journalists got to see sneak peaks of some new shows heading to HBO, including A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and the second season of The Last of Us. Executives also revealed that HBO's upcoming Harry Potter TV show would start filming in the summer of 2025, which puts it on track for a late 2026 or 2027 release.
Obviously, the Harry Potter show is a big deal for the network. The books by J.K. Rowling are still beloved and the movies modern classics. Per Variety, the show "had auditioned 32,000 kids to play the lead roles," which I assume means characters like Harry Potter, Hermoine Granger and Ron Weasley, three kids who become friends while attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The casting team is reportedly reviewing between 500 and 1,000 audition tapes per day. This sounds insane, but if you don't cast those roles correctly, you don't have a show, so they're doing what they need to do.
Mark Mylod, who will direct several episodes of the show, clarified that they hadn't made any final casting decisions yet, although we've heard about HBO making offers to older actors who might play some of the iconic Hogwarts staff members, including Mark Rylance as Headmaster Dumbledore and Paapa Essiedu as Potions Master Severus Snape. When it comes to the adult characters, Mylod said the idea was to follow in the footsteps of the Harry Potter movies and cast “brilliant theater actors in the U.K." Meanwhile, the kids will be newcomers. The intent is to “workshop with some of our shortlisted candidates” in January.
Will HBO's new Harry Potter show go beyond the books?
Harry Potter remains a cultural behemoth, so there will be a lot of interest in this show. Still, one of the criticisms leveled at the series is that it feels superfluous. The movies aren't that old and adapt all eight books in a good amount of detail, the argument goes, so what's the point of making a TV show that does the same thing?
Well, as faithful as the movies were, they didn't adapt everything from the books, and producers have suggested that the new show will go more in-depth. And at this media event, showrunner Francesca Gardiner seemed to hint that the show would go even further; she said she was excited to "really dig into the character arcs." In Variety's words, that includes exploring "the lives of the staff, beloved and feared alike."
We don't know exactly what this means, but I get the idea that they might want to try making up new material for the likes of Snape, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Trelawny, and all the other staff members at Hogwarts. Will we see Hagrid go speed dating? Will we find out that Professors Flitwick and Sprout were having an on-again, off-again affair behind the scenes?
I'm just speculating here, but that's the impression I get from Variety's report. I'm not sure how I'd feel about the show not just adapting more of the books but expanding on them. Mylod said that the intent with the show wasn't to “undo what was done so brilliantly” it the movies, but rather to evolve it. We won't know what exactly he means for a while.
Will se see Lily and James Potter die in the new Harry Potter show?
Something else that my eye is that Gardiner and Mylod reportedly said they would be sticking to the canonically correct ages for the characters. So Snape, for example, will be in his 30s. James and Lily Potter, meanwhile, will be younger, since they only around 21 years old when they are killed by the dark lord Voldemort when Harry it still a baby, the event that sets much of the series into motion.
All the same, we don't actually see that event happen in the first Harry Potter book, nor in the first movie; it's just alluded to. But if Gardiner and Mylod are talking about casting 21-year-old actors to play James and Lily, does that mean they're thinking about including it in the first season of the TV show? Again, I'm speculating, but that's the thought that came to my head.
I guess it's possible that they're only talking about casting James and Lily Potter for the first season so they can show up in the Mirror of Erised, a magical mirror that Harry encounters during his first year at Hogwarts. In the movies, James and Lily were played by Adrian Rawlins and Geraldine Somerville, who were in their 40s and 30s respectively in the first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
HBO remains committed to working with J.K. Rowling
Hanging over all of this is the specter of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who has become best known in recent years for her obsessive, virulent transphobia. For longtime Potter fans, it's been insane to watch Rowling, once considered a champion for liberal views, peddle in incrasingly alarmist stereotypes about trans people disproven with a glance at the research or just by talking totrans people about their experiences. She's publicly feuded with cast members from the Harry Potter movies, divided fan communities and even engaged in some light Holocaust denial. The issue has consumed her public persona, withVariety noting that over a two-month period she tweeted about trans issues 200 times (excluding replies) and aboutHarry Potter eight times. It's. Been. Nuts.
And yet, she is the creator of Harry Potter and has ownership rights in the property, which means she's involved in the new TV show. HBO has chosen to embrace rather than downplay her presence, with executive Casey Bloys reinforcing that decision during this event, saying that he's “totally comfortable” with Rowling’s involvement and “not concerned about consumer response.”
He's probably right about consumers not caring one way or another about Rowling's involvement; a lot of the backlash against her has been online, and sometimes it's helpful to remember that most folk don't follow online debates. That said, Rowling has ratcheted up her transphobic rhetoric considerably over the years, so I'm not counting out the possibility that she'll do something unexpected and attention-grabbing before the show arrives. It's one of many bridges this series will have to cross.
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