New Harry Potter show wants Oscar winner Mark Rylance to play Dumbledore

Warner Bros. Discovery is hard at work prepping a new show about Harry Potter, a young boy who's whisked off to wizard school for seven straight books of drama and adventure. The new series would adapt the whole of J.K. Rowling's novels over the course of several seasons. Even now, WBD is looking for kids aged 9-11 to play the three main characters: Harry, Ron and Hermione. For those of us who were around for the Harry Potter movies released between 2001 and 2011, it's a bit surreal. We're going again.

Those movies were famous for casting approximately every prominent British actor on the island to fill out the vast supporting cast, and it looks like the TV show will follow suit. According to Variety, WBD is eying actor Mark Rylance to play the key role of Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and one of the many mentor figures in Harry Potter's life.

In 2016, Rylance won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Rudolf Abel in Steven Spielberg's movie Bridge of Spies. He's also known for his work in Dunkirk, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and Don’t Look Up, as well as for playing famed English statesman Thomas Cromwell in his historical drama Wolf Hall.

The 64-year-old Rylance may not exactly be a household name, but he has a pretty illustrious career, which fits the profile of many of the actors from the Harry Potter movies, including both Richard Harris and Michael Gambon, who both played Dumbledore on the big screen. As with those two, it might be tricky to convince actors of this caliber to commit to playing the same role for years on end, and work on a TV show will likely be even more intense and lengthy than on the movies. WBD may have to open its wallet pretty wide on this one.

Presumably, this means that someone like Gary Oldman, who played Sirius Black in the original Harry Potter movies and who has toyed with the idea of playing Dumbledore on TV, won't feature in the new show. It'll be a new Harry Potter for a new age. There's no release date as of yet, but I woudln't expect this show to come out before 2026 at the earliest.

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