Harry Potter TV Series Based on Books Nearing Deal at HBO Max (Report)
HBO Max is waving its magic wand and making a new Harry Potter TV series appear.
A series based on the blockbuster book and movie franchise is nearing a deal with the streamer, according to a report from Bloomberg. Each season of the series would be based on one of the seven Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, who will be creatively involved in the series, but will not serve as sole creator or showrunner.
Talks are still ongoing, but parent company Warner Bros. Discovery is holding a press event next Wednesday for its streaming service (which may include a long-awaited new name), so the time is right for a big programming splash.
The Harry Potter series began with Rowling’s first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, first published in 1997. Six more books followed, selling more than 600 million copies worldwide combined. A feature film franchise starring Daniel Radcliffe as the titular wizard first hit the big screen in 2001, with eight films grossing more than $7 billion in total. Radcliffe and his co-stars reunited for an HBO Max special, Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts, that debuted last year. A potential TV series based on the books was first announced back in early 2021.
I was hoping for a Cursed Child movie with the original cast.
They can’t do that. Dan, Emma and Rupert all refuse to do it because of Terfy McTerfface Joanne.
… I could happen.
… it could happen!
Ugh, why. That play is awful fanfiction about Voldemort child and such. Bleh, no thanks
They’d do whatever makes them money. The problem is that Cursed Child isn’t canon. Yes I know JK said otherwise in a tweet, but most people agree that the plot contradicts established rules of the franchise. It is an elaborate fanfiction turned into a play that was written by two men and edited by by the author who added her credibility to the project as a cash grub. This way she can still write a continuation when and if she pleases.
Is anyone actually asking for this? Why do they need to remake the movies, they were great and still popular.
Because it’s not a remake of the movies. It’s an adaption of the books. The movies left out a lot, which could finally be included if done as a series.
I mean, considering the entirety of the series takes place in the late 1980s/early 1990s, you could do an entire period piece based around the music and clothing. Plus the Minister of Magic met with the British PM in 1991, which would have been John Major. Finally, Hermione could be black, like Rowling originally wanted, and it could be obvious Dumbledore was gay, where the movies did not touch on that at all and the books did.
Only flashbacks happen in the 80’s the main timeline of the books takes place between 1991-1998
Yeah… a series could go into more details. 8-10 episodes per season, per book versus a single 2.5 hour movie.
Yes. Obviously. They aren’t remaking the movies.
Warner Brothers’ Fantastic Beasts movies came to an end and with the popularity of the Hogwarts Legacy RPG, they want to keep the Harry Potter money coming in.
Ugh. Why?
they have a WHOLE world do something else!
I love HP but aren’t the movies enough? The movies are not even that old.
No, the movies are not enough, considering how much they cut from the books
Dobby!
Agreed! Always thought that Harry Potter as well as the Chronicles of Narnia would be better as series. One book per season.
Yup!
The movies seriously only cover like half of the book. I mean, there was a ton of stuff that happened that you never even get a whiff of in the movies, which is fine, I understand you can’t have a running time of 7 hours to cover everything in each book. That’s why TV shows are great because you don’t need to have everything wrapped up in a bow in a 42 minute runtime.
Nope. And the movies are a good partial version of the books that deviates often and substantially from the text. How many times do we see Sherlock Holmes (for example)?
I would have thought they’d want to go with the “Hogwarts: Legacy” game to capitalize on their recent success with their other video game adaptation (The Last of Us).
Not thrilled JK Rowling will be involved. Sick of her.
Did have to check to see when this was posted in case it was April 1st.
I was hoping to see this sometime in my lifetime though. I want a version true to the books. The movies were good but it was hard to make the movies without all the books being released in advance.
Huh? There were no movies released before the book of that movie came out.
Yes, but they started the movies before the series ended, which meant stuff that turned out to be important in later books were cut as trivialities from earlier movies.
I mean, they still made movies of the last books and no one was confused. And they had Rowling watching over them so if it was really important she could have mentioned “hey you might want to leave that in, it’s important later.” Since it all worked out nothing was THAT important that was left out.
Actually there were a number of cases where Rowlings stepped in and told them not to cut something. Kreecher for example was not going to be in the movies, but she stressed his importance in the plot later on.
She wrote the source material, so she’s involved regardless.
Yeah, no. That transphobe doesn’t need more money.
Hard pass. Loved the books. Loved the movies. I have no desire to watch a reboot into a series. Best of luck, though.
Only because I thought it was perfect as it was.. It would be like rebooting Buffy, Angel or Firefly – not necessary and almost blasphemous.
And with a deeply problematic creator to boot.
I would probably only be interested in seasons 4 and maybe 5, just because of all that was left out of the books. But I think the movies were mostly good enough.
Reboot it and set it in America like the movies were supposed to be!
How were British books about a boarding school in Scotland supposed to be in the USA?
Love the idea of bringing Harry Potter to a whole new generation through TV. J. k. Rowling made our children believe in magic. While drawing in adults with her attention to details adding depth to her characters. Exciting news!
Can’t and won’t watch if Rowling’s involved.
She killed my huge love for her work with her hateful discourse. She became, at best an embarrassment, at worst a symbol of everything that’s wrong.
Again, she wrote the source material. It really isn’t possible for her not to be involved as its her creation.
Surprising how many people don’t seem to grasp that concept…
Nope, Not with JK Rowling at the helm. She lost that right by expressing her opinions that are hurtful to the LGBTQ+ community. I don’t respect her and will not have anything more to do with her future projects.
JK Rowling lost the right to be involved in her own creation because she expressed an opinion? We live in weird times
Tom agreed.
The T+ community already starts hyperventilating when somebody mentions biological facts or that there are people that actually feel they belong in the bodies they were born in. Don’t pay them too much attention.
*Phoebe voice* Oh no…
Valerie cherish voice — I do not need to see that!
I have such a bad feeling about this, we all know how the majority of reboots go nowadays.
This is a huge mistake…people, myself included, want a continuation not just a redo of the original movies…not to mention how you would even begin to cast this series given how beloved the original cast is.. giant mistake.
People, myself included, do want them to redo the books as a tv show…I’m thrilled
Like a lot of other people have said, it’s an adaptation of the books, not the movies. And as someone who went to pretty much all the midnight releases of the books and read them repeatedly, there’s so much that the movies had to leave out due to their length. Love the movies and cast, but there’s a lot left out. Always was disappointed by the lack of Hermiome trying to unionize the house elves, for example. Cracked me up.
I’m a 90s child. I grew with Harry Potter, read all the books so many times, saw the movies so many times. I will not be supporting anything to do with that franchise anymore because of JK.
When HBO saw that Amazon burned half a billion dollars on a lackluster TV show adaptation of a books series already made into very successful movies two decades of course they thought hold my beer……