Harry Potter Is Being Rebooted?
Is Harry Potter about to get a remake on HBO Max? Is that what fans want?
With the way Hollywood reboots franchises left and right, discussions around a Harry Potter remake come up frequently. To many fans, and the actors themselves, it almost seems inevitable. At some point, they’ll take the original Harry Potter stories, and just retell them. This is often said by fans with their teeth gritted. The actors have been asked about this possibility in interviews to mixed reactions. Now, We Got This Covered is reporting that their sources claim a Harry Potter series for HBO Max is in the works.
According to the outlet, the Harry Potter reboot series would be a more faithful adaptation of the books. The intention is for HBO Max to take the seven-book series and give each novel a complete season. This would give more room for the full details of the novels to be explored. An adaptation on this scale would be expensive, but something that fans have demanded since the movies first came out. Daniel Radcliffe, who played the title character in the original films, was often asked in interviews about longer movies. He had said that while many fans might have loved four-hour Harry Potter films, others would have found that to be too much. And that’s true. In a movie setting, novel adaptations don’t have enough room to include everything. A series could give the JK Rowling novels more space for the Wizarding World fans love.
It’s worth noting, however, that what fans have seen previously in novel adaptations has shown that television writers tend to stray from the source material as the series goes on. How closely would a Harry Potter series really stay to the seven novels? Comparing HBO’s Game of Thrones season one to the first novel comes up fairly similar to the source material, especially in the early episodes. However, by the final season of the series, the final novel hadn’t even been published yet, and still hasn’t to this day. It wouldn’t have mattered much though, since the two had strayed so far apart.
True Blood is another example. The series was based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. The first season begins closely with the source material. The end of the show and the novels are completely different. The characters are entirely different people with different events happening. It would be a tough sell to do that over seven seasons with a Harry Potter series.
We know that HBO Max is working on some Harry Potter series. However, we have no idea if a remake of the original novels is in the cards. This is only a rumor for now. It seems like, with the Wizard World expanding with Fantastic Beasts, they have a lot of room to take this in another direction. For example, a series that followed The Marauders, or a project that follows the silver trio, or a project that follows characters we’ve never met before. If Warner Bros is looking to grow the franchise and give it a strong future, it would seem like telling new stories in the world offers more future opportunities than remaking their previous work already.
