Harry Potter is a name that many a 90’s kid will be well familiar with. The adventures of Harry, Ron, and Hermione became a legend and propelled author J.K. Rowling to billionaire status. They also helped launch an incredibly successful series of 8 films that pushed several stars into the limelight and jumpstarted their careers.
And while the big star-studded names like Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe have continued to find success in their future careers. J.K. Rowling has become quite infamous for scandals involving her deeply transphobic beliefs, as well accusations of plagiarism. The passage of time has not been kind to her reputation, and the Harry Potter series has also been tarnished for many as a result. That hasn’t stopped the media and gaming industries from pumping out tie-in products though, because millions continue to eat it up.
It has been nearly 20 years since the release of the first film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was released. In that time, interest has certainly waned. So some would question if the news that HBO is working on a Harry Potter TV series for their HBO Max service is a good thing.
The launch of future games and other offshoots of the iconic brand is inevitable. We already heard a fair bit about Hogwarts: Legacy—the latest game in series of spin-offs built around letting players build their own magical legend—which is a full AAA experience that tells its own unique story. Players will get to take on various tasks as they go through various years of their schooling at the Hogwarts school in Scotland, and they will meet some iconic characters and foes along the way.
But when you’re talking about pumping even more money out of a decades-old franchise, it’s certainly a question over whether you should willingly put your time and money into something so deeply connected to a virulent bigot. And that same question applies to the games as well.
Now to be clear, this TV show is separate from the new gaming projects. The project being teased now will likely tie in with the main property, but will be its own original story. Don’t expect to see the Golden Trio pop up here anytime soon. HBO is also using the new Harry Potter TV series as a chance to help out on various other film and streaming projects. We know that Warner Bros. is working with various production outfits on the next three Fantastic Beasts films. There are also other projects in the gaming space.
HBO has been pushing HBO Max pretty hard, and this isn’t the only iconic series they’re attempting to tap into. There are rumors of a project based on Naughty Dog’s Last Of Us coming as well.
If HBO did take this series in a new direction, it has two places it can go. Either the makers decided to pick up where the films and books left off—delving into the territory of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play and other offshoot plots—or they could aim for telling an entirely new story. The latter of these options is what most expect. As any fanfiction writer will tell you, plopping a new story into an established canon is immensely harder than it looks. And it’s even tougher to do it well. The streaming format would give the series a bit more room to breathe narratively speaking, at least more than 8 films did.
So as for what the new Harry Potter TV series will do with the plot, we don’t know and can only guess. We’re likely to see things we haven’t seen before with the wizarding world, it’s just a question of how well-done it is. Not all HBO projects ended gracefully when dealing with long-tail book series’.
Source: HollywoodReporter