HBO is making a TV show based on J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, the internationally famous series about a young boy who learns he's a wizard and fights magic fascism with his scrappy friends. Filming starts this summer and casting announcements have been coming in. The other day, we learned who will be playing the three principles: Ron Weasley (Alastair Stout), Hermione Granger (Arabella Stanton), and Harry Potter himself (Dominic McLaughlin).
HBO and parent company Warner Bros. Discovery surely want people to celebrate these announcements, and there are definitely people who are excited...but there's also an undercurrent of nervous energy under this whole affair. To start, a lot of fans wonder whether we need a Harry Potter TV series at all when the movies aren't that old; the justification from HBO is that the show will adapt the books in more detail, and sure, that'll be neat. But the movies were already quite faithful to the source material, moreso than most adaptations that get made today. The bit about adapting the books in full feels like a line to me, a way to avoid saying that they're making this show because they see a lot of money in it. At least that would sound honest.
Then there are the casting announcements, which have received some blowback. Paapa Essiedu especially got a lot of hate online after it was announced that he would be playing Professor Severus Snape, the main line of argument being that Paapa Essiedu is Black and people really, really, really don't want a Black man playing the character.
Then came the announcement about Harry, Ron and Hermione, and the chatter started up again. Although I'm not gonna link to it, if you search around, you can easily find people swearing off the show because Arabella Stanton appears to be less than entirely white, which conflicts with how they see Hermione. Some people online are debating Stanton's racial background, information it feels distasteful even to relay; we're talking about a child here. One of the most popular reactions to the new casting announcement has been open fear for the child actors, who may soon be exposed to a wave of hate and scrutiny it's impossible for the rest of us to even imagine. After all, when Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson were cast as Harry, Ron and Hermione in the original movies, social media literally didn't exist yet. What an Edenic time.
Anticipating all of this, HBO disabled comments under the Instagram announcements for not only the three kids, but the adult actors as well. HBO has also had to tamp down fears that the show will be "infused" with J.K. Rowling's personal views, which is to say her very public transphobia.
I think HBO is finding it very hard to engender the good vibes it wants for what will be a very expensive series the network wants to run for a long time. Will those vibes finally materialize when the show actually debuts on HBO and HBO Max, probably sometime in 2027? It's possible, but with all the controversies swirling around it, I can't help but think they would have been better off letting this story stay on the shelf a while longer. We'll find out what becomes of all this together.
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