Mischief… Not Quite Manages
We may have come a long way since the rise of Pottermania, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. In spite of JK Rowling surprising views on the trans community, which alienated vast swathes of her fanbase, there’s still a taste for the world she created.
We already know that we’re getting Hogwarts: Legacy – the latest in a string of Harry Potter games, and the first AAA game in the franchise based on an original story – as well as films 3-5 in the Fantastic Beasts series, but it looks like HBO are working on a new TV show to go along with it. Specifically, HBO Max.
This isn’t the only upcoming HBO series we have a reason to be excited for. They’re also working on a series based on The Last of Us, after all, but people are questioning the point of a Harry Potter series.
The way I see it, they can go in two directions. Either they take the route taken by the upcoming Kingkiller Chronicle series, with the television show being an original story while a series of films will follow the books. Harry Potter could easily show us different sides to the wizarding world than we’ve seen before.
On the other hand… well, prepare to feel old, fellow nineties kids, because the movie of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is twenty years old this year. If you were born after November 16th, 2001, you’re officially younger than the film series. It may seem like it’s too soon, but the last film came out in 2011.
A TV series following the books would not only be able to take advantage of the latest technology, it’ll give the stories of each book a chance to breathe – every one in the series takes place of almost a year, beginning in the summer and ending in May, and that’s a lot of story to compress into a movie – even a two-parter. There are multiple big plot points that come out of left field in the series, purely because information was left out in earlier adaptations because they were seen as trivial, like the two-way mirror.
And let’s not forget the obvious: Assuming it takes around a year to make each series – and even that’s a long shot – we’re likely to be around twenty years since the film adaptation of each book by the time the series gets around to adapting it. When you think of it like that, it isn’t quite so strange.
Is the TV show doomed to failure or a hit in the making? Let us know what you think in the comments, on Twitter, or on Facebook.