Harry Potter Reboot Coming Soon! Good or Bad Idea?
The Harry Potter books and movies are beloved pieces of pop culture for 27 years. They gave us eight movies over the course of 10 years. The main Harry Potter franchise grossed $7.6 billion. Since it’s made so much money and they’re so popular WB wants to do more with the franchise. Is this a good idea? Or is it a cheap way to make money?
What’s coming?: For a couple of years now, it’s been announced that a Harry Potter reboot is in the works. For a while, we didn’t know much about it. We didn’t know what the reboot was going to be. It could have been a film franchise or a tv show, we weren’t too sure. Last year it was confirmed that it was going to be rebooted as a tv show. It’s going to be an HBO Max exclusive tv show. We don’t have a showrunner, a cast, nothing. The CEO of WB, David Zaslav said they’re aiming for a 2026 release date. That’s all we know about the project, but since it is aiming for a 2026 release date they probably need to start filming soon, cast people, and get a showrunner.
My Thoughts
If you know me you know that I love Harry Potter, the eight movies are great. There’s not a bad one in the mix, they all range from good to fantastic. I know a lot of Harry Potter fanatics hate the idea of them rebooting Harry Potter. Rightfully so, I can understand that. Those movies defined a generation, a generation of people who grew up reading the books and watching the movie. They’re old enough where they can show their kids the movies. Besides some weak CGI in the first couple of movies, they still look great. As you move into Deathly Hallows Part 2 the visuals are perfect. There’s not that mean weak shots or moments with the visuals. Plus, if it does come out in 2026 that’ll be 25 years since The Sorcerer's Stone hit theaters, 15 years since Deathly Hallows Part 2 came out. Rebooting a franchise 25 years later is a good amount of time. Right off the bat, I love that it’s a tv show. I would rather them do a tv show than another film franchise. The movies are based on books, you can only fit so much of the books into 2 hour long movies. Half-Blood Prince is almost 900 pages, you can’t fit all of that into a 2 hour movie. But if you tell the story over 8-10 episodes, you can tell the entire thing. You can put in the stuff the movies left out very easily. So have it be where each season is a book. Seven books = seven seasons. You get actors that are 10, 11 years old and they can play these characters until they’re 18, 19 years old.
Another thing to consider here, HBO Max has a fantastic track record with television. Since HBO Max (or MAX) has started, they’ve put out several critically acclaimed shows that were beloved and got a lot of Emmy wins. The two big examples of this are House of the Dragon and The Last of Us. They’re giving them big budgets to tell these stories, their productions on these shows are massive. Even The Last of Us is obviously based on a video game, I haven’t seen the show or played the game but it sounds like it’s a very faithful adaptation. They did a good job of making fans of the video games pleased with adapting it into live action. If they can apply that level of skills to adapting the Harry Potter books in a tv show we could be in for something very special.
Should they do spin-offs instead?: I think the Harry Potter world is great, there’s great world building. It’s this world where it’s easy to tell other stories in this universe. One of the big issues people take with Star Wars is why so many of the projects take place between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. They want stories to be disconnected from The Skywalker Saga, I think that’s fair and I would agree. I feel like that could apply to The Wizarding World. They tried that with Fantastic Beasts and it didn't work out the best. But it wasn’t because the idea of spin offs was bad, it was because they didn’t find the right story to tell. You could tell a story 100 years before The Sorcerer's Stone takes place. You could do a prequel trilogy about the founders of the Hogwarts house. They even wrote the book, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Adapted that into a movie, get Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson back and tell a story about Harry’s son at Hogwarts. Again, I’m not mad about them rebooting the franchise. There’s a side of me that wishes we were getting more spin offs or prequels in The Wizarding World.
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