Earlier this year, to the delight of fans of J.K. Rowling’s ‘Wizarding World’, a new Harry Potter streaming series was announced for the American streaming service ‘Max’ (formerly ‘HBOMax’). In recent years, the global bestsellers have been hit with controversy over comments by Rowling – who now co-owns the franchise alongside Warner Brothers – yet merchandise and spin-off projects are continuously magicked into existence. But with all the potential hype a rebooted series could garner, it is safe to assume that Max’s Harry Potter series will be a creative disaster.
Here is what we know about the series. Max’s Harry Potter will first air in 2025/6 and is projected to run for 10 years. The series will retell the narratives of the books, but apparently in much more detail than the movies could afford to focus on. The series will presumably have a completely new cast, with new child actors for the ‘golden trio’ – much to the delight of every theatre mum up and down the country. The basis of any justification for the reboot is to innovate where the films did not. Innovation for a new audience, innovation with new visuals, innovation of interpreting the world of Harry Potter, and innovation through a more ‘book-accurate’ story.
Let’s go over all of these potential successes the reboot has and pick apart at them.
Firstly, there is no new audience to innovate for. Whilst franchises like Planet of the Apes – directly rebooted in 2001 – aren’t as well know and can merit a reboot, Harry Potter is still growing strong as a franchise. It is THE children’s book. When you see prep school kids in the dining room on world book day, most of them are dressed in Gryffindor robes – alongside the small group of football kit kids who couldn’t be bothered to make a sodding effort. There is no real need to reintroduce Harry Potter to a new audience, as the audience is ever present. For the potential visual effects improvements over the films – whilst the troll lurking around the bathroom from the Philosopher’s Stone (‘rattle rattle, jewellery jewellery’) looks outdated now – most of the films hold up visually. Besides, with the way VFX are nowadays, any new version of the cave troll would probably look like it was imported from the PS2 Harry Potter game.
The main issue for innovating the Harry Potter franchise is the interpretation or spin the series will put on the world visually – and how any major deviation from what has already been done will fail. Max’s announcement clip is entirely made up of reused aspects from the film. The title logo, the inclusion of Hedwig’s Theme, and the backdrop of Hogwarts – all the same from the films. The reboot series will face a key issue, its existing interpretation. Most reboots bring their own spin to things and are welcomed to do so – you can tell a difference between Michael Keaton’s Batman and Robert Patterson’s for example. The Harry Potter series is different in that the world is so established visually, that it would be harder to stand out from the shadow of the films. Years of merchandising have provided definitive articles on how every aspect of the Harry Potter universe looks, acts, and sounds. 2023’s ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ used the same visuals as the films for its spin on Hogwarts – with a nearly identical layout of Hogwarts, and the exact same looks for the magical creatures. Years of merchandising of the series have implanted how everything looks and sounds. I sometimes get adverts for the latest Dobby toy (one of its taglines is ‘he knows when he’s been freed’ – from slavery, essentially) which has been voiced by someone attempting to do their best Toby Jones’s Dobby impression, again capitalising on the pre-existing visuals of the franchise. Whilst the series could make drastic changes to how aspects of the world look, why bother? Everyone knows the pentagonal box of a Chocolate Frog – why would you go and create a new one?
The series’ final chance at innovating from the Films – a greater run time to add all aspects of the book. But the ability to go into more detail of the books is not as innovative as Max hopes. Film adaptations make cuts from source material for a reason. There is a key reason why Tom Bombadil isn’t in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy – in a film setting, he is a completely irrelevant character, whose section in Tolkien’s book undermines the pace of the films, whilst not bringing anything substantial to the films. In the Philosopher’s Stone book, Harry and co stumble upon the forbidden floor whilst going to meet Malfoy for a duel at night – with pages dedicated to the build up of this duel that never comes about. In the film, Harry and co stumble upon the forbidden floor after accidentally being taken there by the stairs. The unnecessary wizard duel is ignored, as it isn’t necessary. Whilst a TV series setting would provide more time for aspects like this it isn’t necessary to show all aspects of the book. Some may pre-emptively accuse Max of introducing new content to the plot, and perhaps trying to ‘diversify’ the original story to be more inclusive than Rowling’s original writings – and whilst representation is not bad, the controversies and discord brought about it may taint the project like it did with the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.
In summary, Max’s new series will find it hard to expand creatively on the Harry Potter franchise. The pre-existing properties of the franchise visually and in its merchandise mean that changes to the look of the series will be very minute in comparison to the films. The series will not be made to garner new fans, but to appease fans already familiar with the ins and outs of the franchise. The whole creation of the series is summed up in the idea that God saw how popular Oxygen was, and decided to remake it to look nearly exactly the same and do the exact same thing – no one wants God to reboot Oxygen! Whilst Warner Brothers predict a decade of content, my prediction right now will be that the series does not reach that milestone, and will either get cut short early on, or its ending brought closer than originally anticipated.