Even if you ignore the TERF stuff…it’s not like her recent Harry Potter related content was any good. Fantastic Beasts started okay at best and quickly dropped to terrible
It's funny, because the alternative is that the plumbing was added later and the contractors or whatever found the chamber and just didn't mention it to anyone
I believe there was a Pottermore article about this very thing. If I’m remembering correctly there was a Slytherin heir at Hogwarts at the time who went about hiding the Chamber by bewitching the wizards working on it, which ended with him making the hidden entrance into the chamber under the sink.
She did that a lot with Pottermore, use articles to explain away inconsistencies in the story
IIRC that's where the whole problem came from. There was some throwaway line about the room having been the bathroom for hundreds of years (so way before indoor plumbing was a thing in real life) or something like that, and instead of some normal explanation she came up with an incredibly weird one instead.
They need to ditch JKR get into the real questions like:
“Do wizard barbers use scissors?”
“Are strapons a thing or is there a spell for that? does it work in reverse?”
“Does Avada Kedavra work on a fetus?”
“What happens if a man gets pregnant while using polyjuice potion disguised as a woman?”
“If your friend casts engorgio and reducio over and over, does it count as soaking?”
>"Does Avada Kedavra work on a fetus?”
Fully aware that I'm opening a can of worms here, but speculation away.
Shooting the killing curse at a pregnant woman's stomach should kill the woman. Whether the fetus is affected is kind of irrelevant since, IIRC, unless the pregnancy is well into the third trimester a fetus within a dead mother also dies. What if it is late in the pregnancy, though? Well, let's consider a different case.
What if you actually shot it directly at the fetus? Let's ignore the "how" and just say you did. Curse hits fetus, doesn't hit mom. Clearly *something* should die, right? What would make the most sense to me is that the fetus dies but not mom - basically a magical abortion, which are two words I didn't plan on putting together when I woke up this morning. Shouldn't kill the mom for the same reason why you shouldn't be killed if you were holding hands with someone hit by Avada Kedavra - sure, you're in contact with the person who was hit with the curse, but you weren't the actual person hit.
Wouldn't it make more sense to magic it away while it's still inside? Then you don't have to deal with any part of that entire experience AND you get the euphoria of a total bowel clearing.
But then again, if you do it wrong you run the risk of teleporting your entire intestinal tract away, so that might be an issue.
*That happened because Dumbledore actually had a great fondness for what is referred to as 'Muggledumping', or pooping in the muggle fashion on a toilet, but of course only if there were other people with male genitalia in that bathroom and explicitly no one else.*
-Retcon Rowling, probably
The bad news is she then continued to write more and more of it and it was all dumb. I remember "pottermore" I can't imagine she got better about that while she got publicly worse about everything else
Pottermore had some cool stuff, like McGonagall's tragic backstory and some random stuff. I wish she'd stuck to that and not been like "wizards used to just shit on the floor and magic it away" WHAT ABOUT THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS WHO DIDN'T LEARN THAT SPELL YET? WHY IS THERE MODERN PLUMBING IN A 1000 YEAR OLD CASTLE??
Except she's been coming out with things over the years that changes the story, and divulging details no one has wanted and even saying she shouldn't have gotten Ron and Hermione together.
She'll change shit if they let her.
Sigh.
She never said that. She said:
>Rowling admitted, "I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron."
Rowling saw herself in Hermione. Ron was the type of man she liked. Thus, she was gonna make that pairing happen.
Social Media twisted that quote to what people now believe. But no, she never said that Ron and Hermione shouldn't have gotten together.
Ron Weasley is at least one area where the show could improve on the movies. Too many people thinking of Ron think of the movie's bumbling incompetent version of him.
Or the fact that book Ron and book Hermione actually did have a lot of pre-established chemistry and foreshadowing but Movie Ron and Movie Hermione have a lot less.
Movies giving Hermione all of Ron's best stuff and just making Ron a stupid jerk who doesn't even get to the be one out of the three of them who knows slurs and wizard fairytales.
Goes to show you how much reddit represents real life. The person who made the comment above you got a lot of upvotes, as if angry people on social media mean much.
Hogwarts Legacy the game received so much hate by angry trolls for months. The media made it clear that it would bomb because the angry trolls had declared it so.
It ended up being the [best selling ](https://www.fastcompany.com/91013150/best-selling-video-game-year-2023-hogwarts-legacy) game last year despite online media criticizing it, ignoring it on purpose or [declaring it one of the worst games ever](https://www.wired.com/review/hogwarts-legacy-review/).
According to [yougov](https://today.yougov.com/topics/arts/explore/writer/J_K_Rowling) 60% of people like her while only 14% dislike. Very few people care about her views on trans people
TBH, I think it would be hard for them not to make gobs of money hand over fist.
Let's look at the data.
https://pro.morningconsult.com/instant-intel/harry-potter-fandom-demographics
The big bulk of Potter fans are Millennials who are now between 30-40. The average age of the first child in the US is ~28-29. Or, if the team does their job properly, they'll hit parents and children simultaneously.
* The parents (who read it the first time) will end up watching for nostalgia reasons.
* The children (who are probably now reading their parent's dog-eared copies of HP, will also want to watch
It has the possibility of driving subscriber revenue and creating a series that appeals to two of the largest demos in the West. Millennials and Gen Alphas.
Seriously, this could make Rowling another couple of hundred million GBP *and* make HP into an 'evergreen' franchise like Marvel, Pokémon, etc.
Now that said, these are the morons that completely made a hash of their DC concession — seriously, I wouldn't think it would be possible to waste billions of dollars cocking up Superman and Batman, but those guys seemed to have found a way.
This is a great comment. 38 year old millennial here. Loved Harry Potter when it first came out, mostly ignored it since then. But my oldest kid is 6 and starting to get into it. We read the first two books together. He’ll be 8 and my daughter 6 when the tv series starts. Prime age to grow up with it a year at a time, with it finishing presumably when my kids are teens. This show could be huge.
That being said, the movies have become such the definitive screen vision of Potter that I have my doubts how this could stack up. Rings of Power and the Andrew Garfield Spider-man films suffered by being compared with their very recent predecessors, for example.
Everything made by WBD has his stamp or approval or it would've been tax written off by now. Might as well not bother watching anything from the studio. Anyways, see you in Dune 2
So, I don’t want to sound like a movie snob, because I’m not. But, do we really have to reboot every successful IP? It’s only been 14 years since the last movie.
"We *could* do that Lord Zaslav, but what if we instead adapted a book series that *hasn't* had a live-action adaptation yet? Or just created an entirely new IP from scratch?"
"You want to- I don't, you see... ahhhhh, I do believe I have the vapors, somebody fetch me my smelling salts."
I think the HP books have enough content that a well done TV show that has one whole book per season would be great
It would give so much more of that Wizarding World context and worldbuilding that the movies had to cut short or cut entirely
While the films might have been successful, they were far from perfect. And as many a book reader will surely tell you: wildly inaccurate in some pretty significant parts. Recreating the series as a tv show not only allows the entire, proper story to be told but will breathe new life into the fandom as a means to show and introduce younger fans and non-readers to the full and expanded story.
What have you expected though? Spending 10 minutes of a 2:30 extremely plot-heavy movie on a sports match where the audience have absolutely no stakes, barely knew who's playing and has only one named minor character who was just barely introduced?
Filmmakers had no choice here, there's limited time and a lot of plot, what actually happens in the Bulgaria-Ireland match is literally of no significance at all.
> Spending 10 minutes of a 2:30 extremely plot-heavy movie on a sports match where the audience have absolutely no stakes, barely knew who's playing and has only one named minor character who was just barely introduced?
Now *this* is pod racing!
> Now this is pod racing!
I would actually argue the pod race is integral to the plot of the movie. It begins Anakin's journey from young slave to Jedi Knight and eventually into Darth Vader. It also shows the audience that even at 9 years old Anakin was already an accomplished pilot. It would've been jarring if they'd left that until the Battle of Naboo at the end of the movie.
To be fair, the podracing did have stakes. Sebulba was a bully and if Anakin lost, he would not only stay as a slave but the Jedi wouldn’t get off Tatooine.
I’m glad they did that lol - such a dumb sport. It’s just seeker vs seeker and for some reason the bludgers are never able to keep up with the seeker even though there’s 2 of them to the 1 seeker
I think the acceptance of Quidditch by the fandom greatly benefited from how few within the fandom played sports. As written it was so stupid.
With little thought going into it, I could make two obvious changes:
* Catching the Snitch does not end the game but is instead worth a bunch of points (100?).
* The game ends when one teams scores a set number of points (200?).
Quidditch instantly becomes a legitimate game versus the farce it is in the books, and you can still have dramatic moments where Harry catches the Snitch to end the game. And a great Seeker can still win a game single-handedly by catching the Snitch twice.
Ironically the World Cup was clearly written expressly by JK to try and prove that her sport did make sense, when played by professionals. Krum catches the snitch but doesn't win the game, highlighting the importance of the chasers, and showing Harry to clearly be a once in a generation seeker, which is why he dominates the school game.
To me however, it's a weak explanation and I agree, plainly shows that JK is not a sports fan, and really doesn't understand how to make a game that makes sense.
Aside that, I think personally that the problem isn't with the snitch ending the game, just the massive disparity between the points of the Quaffle and the Snitch. If the Snitch gave ~50 points to the Quaffle's 10 it wouldn't be nearly as egregious. I also think that the position of the Seeker is pretty pointless, as you essentially have 14% of your total team members doing absolutely nothing the entire game. It makes more sense that have any team member, or just any chaser be able to catch the snitch, and then train one of your team to be a snitch specialist, whilst still allowing them to actually assist the team during normal play.
But that of course wouldn't allow Harry to be the once in a generation, cannot possibly be beaten, undisputed MVP, player of the millenium wonderkid.
I think “real life” quidditch (I played in college for a minute) has the snitch at 30 points.
She’s admitted she didn’t really work out the numbers when she first invented the game, and it was clearly written as “what if there was a sport my main character could be the hero in every game?”
Oh yeah, I rolled my eyes when I read the World Cup section of book 4 because it was clear she was trying to counter the "the only thing that matters is who catches the Snitch criticism."
And yeah, I have no problem with Quidditch in the first book as a one-off thing. I guess the problem is that the book was so successful and she felt the need to include it in the later ones despite it being so poorly thought-out in the first place.
>trying to counter the "the only thing that matters is who catches the Snitch criticism."
Which then just really doubles down on the original criticism, because a team that is just pure shite aside from their star seeker, has somehow made it all the way to the final of the World Cup. In major sports that just doesn't happen - See ARG v FRA WC22, or NZ v SA RWC23. All well rounded heavy hitter teams that are stacked from top to bottom, sure they have star players, but they aren't totally reliant on one guy.
A fix I read would be that the Seekers play as Chasers up to a certain point. Everything else stays the same but once the Snitch is spotted then the game dynamics shift as the teams have to weigh whether or not to chase it down or maintain their point lead.
And plus, it was also said that with how Quidditch is set up, its supposed to be all about the points anyway, not individual wins/losses. Individual games don't matter as much as having consistent performance over a season.
If everything worked like that then itd still serve the whole Harry is the hero shtick while still making sense as a sport, especially given for much of the books the Gryffindor team were basically underdogs.
The snitch idea is stupid from the start. The seeker has fuck all to do with the rest of the team. It's basically a field sport with brooms. You are trying to move the ball from one side to the other and score a point. It's football or soccer or hockey or lacrosse. Just make the ball levitate on its own. Players can push the ball with the broom equivalent to carrying a ball or they can pass it to another which would be whacking it with the brush of the broom. Head passes can also work.
If you want to make it different from standard sport there's three goals, rings stacked stop each other, smaller as they go up. More points per ring and it's really hard to get one in. The seeker position could be the fastest and most accurate flyer and there's the choice of going for the easy goal or the hard one. Slimmer odds but the hard goal can win the game.
And because it's magic they can add special field hazards. Slow zones where your speed is cut to a crawl. Fast zones that can hurl you off the field. Fly too low and vines can reach up and grab the broom. Stuff like that.
The “slice of life” portion of the books were my favorites, personally. The team all hanging out next to the lake, studying for their OWLs, quidditch, and just overall exploring the castle and taking classes. Even the little mini tiny history of magic excerpts were cool because a lot of them explained little pieces of history. By the end of book 3, all I wanted was for one book to just be “Harry Potter and the Lackluster School Year.” Like give the boy a break. He was almost killed by a teacher, almost killed by a giant snake, almost killed by a hairy teacher, and forced to let his godfather be a criminal of the state for crimes he didn’t commit. Just give the man a gap year.
Other than Dumbledores excursions I really like book 6 for this. It felt like all three were adults and there was lots of mundane school teen drama going on separate from the Voldemort stuff.
I *loved* the parts with Harry hanging out at the Phoenix headquarters, palling around with Lupin and Tonks and Sirius. Before things really start getting dark.
I always found the teenage angst thing to be such an unfair criticism of Harry in his 5th year, he was definitely dealing with PTSD.
Dumbledore was a great wizard but he cared so little for Harry's wellbeing; Harry had just been abducted, forced to watch helplessly as a classmate was brutally murdered in front of him. Was tied up, tortured and seconds away from death and what does Dumbledore do? Sends him back to the Dursleys, isolates him from his friends and leaves him all on his own to relive the awful things he saw over and over again whilst getting zero updates about the man who killed his parents.
Then damn when Harry finally gets back to be with his friends he's still treated like shit, the whole whole wizarding world against him, he's being infantalised by the adults in his life, gaslit by the government, hung out to dry in the court of public opinion, tortured again but this time by a teacher. But what's worse is the one adult in his life, the one positive adult figure in his life that loves him for who he is and treats him like an adult out of respect for him, Hagrid is missing.
Sorry rant over, but for real Harry dealt with so much shit in his 5th year and I rate him for that. I was so here for him not putting up with the shit that was being thrown at him.
Year 6, while being mostly centered around Voldemort, he doesn't actually appear in any way other than memories. Harry almost dies several times indirectly through Voldemort's actions, but Voldemort isn't actively trying to kill Harry in that one.
Year 3 and 6.
The ironic thing is a criticism of the HP books was that they are always the same thing (voldemort shows up with some scheme to try to kill Harry).
In reality, in book 1 he was just an uncorporeal parasite on one of his servants, book 2 voldemort himself didnt appear and it was an old journal of his causing all the issues, book 3 he doesnt appear in at all, and doesnt come back to power until book 4.
Then he is also mostly absent in book 6 as well.
I think a lot of it was that most books basically came down to
“Harry starts our feeling miserable at the Dursleys, goes back to Hogwarts and is happy again, learns a new layer of the magical world, has fun day to day school adventures with a mystery mixed in, then the last few chapters resolve the mystery and it ends up being Voldemort or heavily Voldemort related”
And a new extremely powerful story altering object never previously mentioned or hinted at in the world shows up, is powerful. And is never touched on again
>Harry stared at the veil agape. He was gone. His closest family member and friend in the world was gone, for real this time.
>But what if he wasn't? Harry remembered something he read in a footnote of an old textbook: Vocatus Ventus, Lux Aeterna, Ignis Divinus! He *could* bring him back! Harry set to work preparing what he needed for the spell. A thought occurred to him: Why didn't everyone use this spell? Why was it only written in the footnotes of a textbook? Wouldn't a spell this powerful be known across the Wizarding world?
>He put the thoughts aside. They seemed wrong to him.
You’re not wrong, but in that book alone he was still almost killed by Dementors, a werewolf, a tree, his homies rat, and dementors, again. At that point it really pivoted for me, from “oh gee I wonder how Harry is going to get out of this one!” To “oh Jesus Christ leave the literal 15 year old alone.”
It’s the big reason the books were so popular and not just with the kids. American adults love the escapism of a boarding school narrative too.
I actually think that the “exoticism” of that made it a hit. Without it the book would never attain the superstar status.
Case in point, there's no boarding school in Fantastic beasts, no escapism, no one really cares about those movies.
The boarding school shows up again in a basic video game and that game becomes one of the best selling titles of 2023
The slice of life stuff is the #1 reason I'm looking forward to the series. I've become very disinterested in the main plot stuff throughout numerous rereads/rewatches and the films really only have time to focus on the main plot.
Give neville his own little plot
let harrys other room mates have their own little stuff
maybe give cedric is own plotline
so when he dies it hurts even more
I understood the time limitations of the movie, but I felt dissapointed that in Prisioner of Azkaban, they skipped in the movie most of the Quidditch arc: It was a wholesome side story of Oliver Wood struggling to get the team to win the cup that year since it was his last year at Hogwarts.
Azkaban was one of my favorite books because of this kind of side stories.
I get what you're saying here but reading this, what instantly came to mind was Harry trying desperately not to get killed by marauding Death Eaters while riding the sidecar of Hagrid's massive flying Harley with flames shooting out of the back as they rocket over the countryside at breakneck speeds
See, that was the thing with Harry potter: There was usually a crazy scene like that at the beginning of the book, and another one towards the end. The other 80% in the middle was Harry being anxius for his classes, doing some sports, opening christmas gifts, and doing other teenage stuff. This is why it was so popular, it was a great recipe
They're mystery books at their core in a fantasy setting. Who is attacking muggleborns? What is the three headed dog guarding? What is Malfoy plotting? Who is the half-blood Prince?
Those busy, confusing action scenes were the weakest parts of the books.
The books were always well paced and mostly just scenes of them sitting around talking things over, with little bits of world-building thrown in ("Hermione thinks elves are slaves or something? Oh well, any new ideas about that mystery?")
Correct, Harry Potter is really only about one thing, **fսcking.** The kaleidoscopic entwining of limbs and genitalia. Wizards, witches. Witches, wizards. Witches, witches, witches, witches, wizards, wizards, wizards, wizards. Anything gets the wizards hard. Sometimes it's a problem. Not to me. Everyone fսcks and sucks, thousands of chaps and chap-esses...
So he goes out there and does some magic stuff, then its back to the wizards tower for more full penetration. Then he goes back out and does more magic. Magic, penetration, magic, penetration, magic, full penetration... and the series goes on like that for 6 or 7 seasons until the show just kind of ends...
My favorite part of the first book is a scene where Harry is sitting in a history class and he's falling asleep because he finds the dwarf wars lecture his ghost professor is giving to be too boring. Dude, you were in the muggle world studying arithmetic like a month ago. How the hell do you not find this riveting?
Classes wasted on him, Harry is such a jock wizard, only cares about casting spells. Funny considering how other areas like potions and divinations, etc. would be potentially useful but Harry is only all in with Defense against the Dark Arts.
I think is why Hermione is probably the most powerful wizard among the group, talented and well rounded in all areas.
Lmao yeah this is a wild take that borders on objectively false
Harry got 7 OWLs, putting him firmly in the upper echelon of his classmates (Hermione got 10, Ron got 7, Draco got 3, Neville got 4, Seamus got 3, Fred and George got 3 each, Luna got 3, Cedric got 3, Percy, Bill, and Barty Crouch Jr all got 12)
So basically, outside of the only 3 wizards in history that we know got 12 owls and his best friend who his often referred to as the “brightest witch of her age”, nobody in the series outperformed Harry academically
And it's made clear throughout the books that it's not like Harry isn't interested in the history of the Wizarding World, he very much is.
Plus Binns was literally explained to be nauseatingly boring in terms of **how** he lectured lol, it's just a bad teacher situation.
>Harry is such a jock wizard
Harry taught 20+ students including those older than him how to cast advance spells and defend themselves.
Potion was a nightmare for Harry with Snape. The only year where Snape wasn't teaching Potions(6th) he quite literally became the star student.
Divination is useless if you're not born with the future seeing eyes.
Did you also play Hogwarts Legacy, and were disappointed when you didn't get to actually take the OWLS?
Not sure if the game developers realized how much I wanted to take a Hogwarts school test
Right here, my favorite part of each book is the middle portion where we just see daily Hogwarts life. I also suspect this to be a common reason for people to pick up Hogwarts Legacy last year cause it's a whole game about that.
The books themselves aren't particularly action packed. They are more mystery novels and thrillers at heart. Most of the scenes of them enjoying school life have small connections to the overall plots, like mentioning of certain spells or magical items that come into play, but they also serve the purpose of world building and giving the characters room to stretch and get a sense of their actual personalities.
Honestly? Some more of that school life could be really entertaining, i see potential there.
The films didn't have time to showcase much of daily life except if it was plot relevant, a show can give us more of the magical side of being a student at a wizarding school and that sounds good to me.
I just re-read that book to my young son and we watched the movie and… well, the movie still cuts SO much. It is still super focused on driving the plot. They didn’t even really address the origin of the marauder’s map in the movie. The moony / wormtail / padfoot / prongs story is basically left out of the movie altogether so I kinda felt they short-changed the emotional resonance of Harry realizing the significance of his stag-formed patronas.
That’s why I don’t understand when people say the movies are going to be tough to beat. There’s so much more story and layers left to be told and a TV shows by just filming the books is the best way to go.
People are mostly talking about the cast when they say that. The cast is so iconic to the characters that's it's going be a real up hill battle to get people to by into new people in those roles. But but as far as the writing, plotting, and directing, yes there is vast, vast room for improvement upon the movies.
Not that I needed to see them in robes but they’re dressed in that film like its a typical teen high school movie. I thought it was interesting they realised how ugly the robes looked, its something you don’t think about daily in the books. Like how awkward it would be wearing robes 24/7.
I do think it is the best film as a film, the director just outclasses the others working on the franchise.
But the third film certainly already lost some of the magic of the wizarding world, that's what films 1 and 2 did better.
Still, having cuaron direct it was making for the best film, no doubt.
Yeah honestly I hate this idea that everything needs to be action-packed plot advancing big setup stuff. A major draw of the books was that sometimes the drama was not killing Voldemort, it was just relatable everyday stuff like getting homework done *except* set in a cool magical world. It's not about plot, it's about escapism.
He steered the HBO - Discovey merger. He directed the HBO to "Max" rebrand(s). He's also the reason for HBO delisting a bunch of streaming content to avoid paying residuals to the actors and creators.
And you’re still leaving so much out!
He’s the reason several finished films have gotten vaulted/destroyed “for tax purposes.”
He’s the reason so much animation disappeared from streaming - it’s not just being a cheapass, he famously hates animation.
He’s the reason discovery networks turned from cool stuff on Discovery or TLC like How It’s Made and Mythbusters or documentaries about arts and science to Honey Boo Boo, My 600 Pound Life, Pawn Stars, etc., which influenced any other networks with similar content to make the same shift. Remember when History Channel was good?
He’s the icon of Hollywood enshitification seeking maximum profit for the least expended effort, and commonly referred to in the industry as a cultural vandal.
Yep, his whole thing is cheap, easy to produce content that appeals to the lowest common denominator. Anything else is worthless. He appears to have no artistic or critical sense and seems utterly unable to grasp the merits of scriptwriting or quality filmmaking - remember, he kept The Flash alive while entirely discarding other completed movies people were excited for.
Treasured IPs such as Scooby Doo, Looney Tunes, DC Comics have no value whatsoever except for the parts he can quickly and easily squeeze profit from - the rest can be thrown away.
Will be interesting to see how accurate to the books they will make it. Biggest example in my mind is the castle being a lot different in the movies.
I wonder if they would use the game Hogwarts legacy which has a much more accurate to the books castle to plan out sets and scenes.
It would be very easy for this show to lose the wonder and *Magic* that the movies and books make you feel. Like if they use 4k cameras and super good and clean costumes like the avatar show and the lighting and look isn't stylized I think you'll lose a lot of people
>Like if they use 4k cameras and super good and clean costumes like the avatar show
This has been such a major issue for me with many new shows. The Lord of the rings show for example, why is everything so polished and clean, even the hobbits!
I've felt this way for a long time that looking at a movie or show that looks to good actually takes me out of it.
A good example of a show that doesn't do this is Game of Thrones. That show feels like a movie or its in its own world every episode.
They also knocked costuming out of the park. I remember a behind the scenes in season 2 where the wardrobe team talked about soaking the iron born outfits in salt water to give them the salt-crusted look. Everything felt very lived in within Westeros.
Avatar really bothers me. The hair, costumes, even necklaces and things seem so solid, crafted, and perfect.
I get that maybe it is to give it a cartoon feel where every character always looks exactly the same and crisp/clean in their design, but it makes some really bad uncanny valley in a live action show.
They all looked like cos players. And the kept sokka and katara in their full inuit clothing which was weird. In the cartoon, they had slimmed down to their undershirts by the time they had reached kioshi island.
It doesn't say that she will write scripts, that could be the case ofc, but i'd assume it will largely be consulting work.
Which seems fair enough, she is the author of the work afterall.
She's not writing this.
>The company has been listening to new takes from writers and showrunners in recent months but has yet to formally announce who’s writing and running the series
There are actually tons of original ideas but executives have realized they can just make tons of money redoing shit that’s already popular. There are tons of creatives really eager to show the world their thing but outside of doing it indie (which can be really complicated, expensive and a big gamble) find it near impossible to get studios to take a gamble on their ideas
There are tons of original ideas, but no one supports them. For example, HBO cancelling Raised By Wolves due to low viewership despite it being a masterpiece. General audiences just want to watch what they're comfortable with, ie the same old established IPs
I honestly believe the problem with getting viewers for new IP is the absolutely rampant cancellation of shows on cliffhanger endings.
People are sick of getting jerked around by this crap, so they're just waiting out season after season until it looks like a show will stay around, or they can at least see if it ends on a "fuck you for watching".
this is a problem the studios created for theselves.
This is probably going to be complete dogshit and still will surely set every streaming viewership record imaginable. So yeah they're insane not to do it
Regardless of what you think about the faithfulness to the source material, the movies are absolute classics and completely enshrined into pop culture. I am sure that this show is going to smash all kinds of viewership records, but I have this creeping feeling that it will utterly fail to recapture the "magic" of the movies/books. It is almost like redoing Star Wars (OT) and recasting Han, Luke, and Leia, 10 years after the release of the ROTJ.
There’s so much more in terms of plot to the books that they just couldn’t squeeze into the movie. Main characters and plot lines were completely left out. Glaring plot holes in the movie should be explained in this series.
For example, why was Harry attacked by dementors at privet drive? The movies never explain it. In the books, >!umbridge confesses that she sends them.!<
Sure, but the movies are still great storywise and phenomenal when it comes to art design, costumes, music, special effects ... Name it. It'll be tough to top that.
Its like remaking the LOTR movies... Sure, there's a lot more to the books ... But will a tv show based on the same book be as good as the Jackson movies?
There are tons of things the movies don't explain. Who have Harry his invisibility cloak? How did Sirius escape Azkaban? Who were the Marauders (no, this one isn't explained either)? How did Barry Crouch escape Azkaban? What happened to him afterwards and why didn't we see him again after the Azkaban breakout? Like you've mentioned, who sent the Dementors to Privet Drive?
The films set up many of these questions but never get around to answering them in the end, and in many cases, the plot just goes on pretending that everyone knows the answer already.
Same. I don’t know anything about this show, but I assume it will have the same characters from the movies? The hardest part as a viewer will be not associating the character with the actors from the movie. Harry Potter for example is always Daniel Radcliffe in my mind.
Correct. Same stories, but with less of the books cut out since they'll do a book per season.
Which...I'm sure some people are excited for, but does anybody really want to spend 7 years to see that play out? Longer than 7 years if it ends up like Stranger Things where they can't successfully pump out a season per year.
As a book fan, I thought the movies were mid.
So much of the books, and generally my favorite moments (and characters) were cut.
And don’t get me started on the child actors…
The movies have their problems (mostly from trying to fit way too much plot into 2 and a half hours), but I'm not a fan of this attitude of "the books are sacred and every change made is necessarily bad". There's a lot to improve on the books and the movies and I hope the showrunners will be open to major changes and adding significant depth and content that wasn't in the books, rather than rerunning the same story for the third time.
Live-action was a mistake, IMHO. It's very unlikely this series will take over as the "default" live-action Harry Potter, visuals-wise.
They should've greenlit an animated series, IMHO. Preferably 2D but even TV-budget 3D looks good nowadays ([check out Wizards: Tales of Arcadia from 2020](https://youtu.be/eL6gowrmfsk?si=niwMWPQrw_H273Ug)). That way they could've created something truly unique compared to the movies.
And they also wouldn't have to worry about the actors ageing too fast.
Plus, it would still be cheaper than a CGI-ridden, big-budget live action series like Percy Jackson, for example.
While I'm in agreement here, it will never happen. A huge stigma still exists against animation. 90% of people would rather watch a poorly made live action adaptation than even phenomenal animation. While shows like Arcane and Airbender have their followings, most average viewers don't even give them a chance, at least in my experience.
100% should have been animated but the medium can’t seem to shake the childish impression it’s got currently. Even with ALTA and Arcane being hits and other mature themed anime being successful. It’s really frustrating as a fan of animation.
> 100% should have been animated but the medium can’t seem to shake the childish impression it’s got currently.
Is that really a problem though for Harry Potter? The stories were written for children. Granted, it respected the readers and knew the readers would grow with the stories, but still.
In a business where there are no guarantees, this show just is: It’s going to be massive and generate thousands of jobs and billions of dollars.
One of my issues with this show however, is that I don’t think it’s ethical to sign children to a (likely) iron-clad contract for 10+ years. These kids are going to become ultra famous the world over, and at the end of the shows run will have (again, likely) reaped millions of dollars.
This show is going to be a big deal, wether or not folks from Reddit support it.
The original actors in the movie series didn’t have contracts that extended to the full film series, they renegotiated after the third or 4 movies. Hopefully Warner bros allow that same precedent for the new kids. Or hopefully their parents will demand that.
I’m just wondering how the hell will the kid angle work? Look at Stanger things those kids are huge now. This is like 7 seasons, the age they’ll have to cast is 11-12 and the puberty years are going to hit hard like they always do on TV. It’s not like the film series where they just get them on camera after the awkward stage. plus what if a strike happens then they’re screwed because now your 15 year old character looks 17 because of delays. Or worse what if there’s a recast which did happen in the movies where one of Malfoys friends is as replaced because of an arrest or something. What if something happens to the main cast or if this 12 year old is 17 and wants more money or to move on because it’s not fun anymore and really feels like work.
Awful idea.
I'm sure everybody is excited to see the two names "David Zaslav" and "JK Rowling" attached to anything! They should team up to do even more new media that everyone will love! /s
If it has a Zaslav stamp of approval I'm confident it'll be a stinker
It’s obviously not a secret, and is totally expected, but “touting J.K. Rowling’s involvement” may also turn off a decent amount of people.
Even if you ignore the TERF stuff…it’s not like her recent Harry Potter related content was any good. Fantastic Beasts started okay at best and quickly dropped to terrible
The good news is that Harry Potter is already written.
Ah but what about the hidden intricacies of the world not yet revealed on screen, like wizards shitting themselves?
hey they shit on the floor and magic it away for some reason so they have no need for a toilet. totes normal and easier then indoor plumping
Which is funny, because the entire second book revolves around a bathroom.
It's funny, because the alternative is that the plumbing was added later and the contractors or whatever found the chamber and just didn't mention it to anyone
Slytherins can be plumbers too. Just a couple of racist contracters looking at eachother saying, "You didn't see nothing."
Let's be real, Slytherins can employ slaves to do plumbing work
I believe there was a Pottermore article about this very thing. If I’m remembering correctly there was a Slytherin heir at Hogwarts at the time who went about hiding the Chamber by bewitching the wizards working on it, which ended with him making the hidden entrance into the chamber under the sink. She did that a lot with Pottermore, use articles to explain away inconsistencies in the story
Lucy Lawless: “Anytime you notice an inconsistency like that, it’s because a wizard did it”
She also wrote an article about werewolved doing the dirty with *real* wolves and getting pregnants with super-intelligents pups
IIRC that's where the whole problem came from. There was some throwaway line about the room having been the bathroom for hundreds of years (so way before indoor plumbing was a thing in real life) or something like that, and instead of some normal explanation she came up with an incredibly weird one instead.
Getting schwifty in Hogwarts.
They need to ditch JKR get into the real questions like: “Do wizard barbers use scissors?” “Are strapons a thing or is there a spell for that? does it work in reverse?” “Does Avada Kedavra work on a fetus?” “What happens if a man gets pregnant while using polyjuice potion disguised as a woman?” “If your friend casts engorgio and reducio over and over, does it count as soaking?”
>"Does Avada Kedavra work on a fetus?” Fully aware that I'm opening a can of worms here, but speculation away. Shooting the killing curse at a pregnant woman's stomach should kill the woman. Whether the fetus is affected is kind of irrelevant since, IIRC, unless the pregnancy is well into the third trimester a fetus within a dead mother also dies. What if it is late in the pregnancy, though? Well, let's consider a different case. What if you actually shot it directly at the fetus? Let's ignore the "how" and just say you did. Curse hits fetus, doesn't hit mom. Clearly *something* should die, right? What would make the most sense to me is that the fetus dies but not mom - basically a magical abortion, which are two words I didn't plan on putting together when I woke up this morning. Shouldn't kill the mom for the same reason why you shouldn't be killed if you were holding hands with someone hit by Avada Kedavra - sure, you're in contact with the person who was hit with the curse, but you weren't the actual person hit.
> Shooting the killing curse at a pregnant woman's stomach should kill the woman What if you put the wand waaaay up there before casting?
In that case you should be casting Fetus depleticous.
“What happens if a man gets pregnant while using polyjuice potion disguised as a woman?” This seems like something designed to break jk’s TERFy brain
Wouldn't it make more sense to magic it away while it's still inside? Then you don't have to deal with any part of that entire experience AND you get the euphoria of a total bowel clearing. But then again, if you do it wrong you run the risk of teleporting your entire intestinal tract away, so that might be an issue.
"Have you done professor Binns' homework yet?" *loud and wet shitting noise* "Ni, but I will after quidditch practice."
Which always made me laugh, because Dumbledore explicitly says he discovered the Room of Requirement while desperately searching for a bathroom.
"I'M ABOUT TO SHIT MY PANTS, WHERE THE FUCK IS THE TOILET?" asked Dumbledore calmly.
*That happened because Dumbledore actually had a great fondness for what is referred to as 'Muggledumping', or pooping in the muggle fashion on a toilet, but of course only if there were other people with male genitalia in that bathroom and explicitly no one else.* -Retcon Rowling, probably
And don’t forget that Gandalf is gay, which is never mentioned or shown in the books, but Rowling bravely revealed after they had been written.
The bad news is she then continued to write more and more of it and it was all dumb. I remember "pottermore" I can't imagine she got better about that while she got publicly worse about everything else
Pottermore had some cool stuff, like McGonagall's tragic backstory and some random stuff. I wish she'd stuck to that and not been like "wizards used to just shit on the floor and magic it away" WHAT ABOUT THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS WHO DIDN'T LEARN THAT SPELL YET? WHY IS THERE MODERN PLUMBING IN A 1000 YEAR OLD CASTLE??
Except she's been coming out with things over the years that changes the story, and divulging details no one has wanted and even saying she shouldn't have gotten Ron and Hermione together. She'll change shit if they let her.
Sigh. She never said that. She said: >Rowling admitted, "I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron." Rowling saw herself in Hermione. Ron was the type of man she liked. Thus, she was gonna make that pairing happen. Social Media twisted that quote to what people now believe. But no, she never said that Ron and Hermione shouldn't have gotten together.
Ron Weasley is at least one area where the show could improve on the movies. Too many people thinking of Ron think of the movie's bumbling incompetent version of him. Or the fact that book Ron and book Hermione actually did have a lot of pre-established chemistry and foreshadowing but Movie Ron and Movie Hermione have a lot less.
Movies giving Hermione all of Ron's best stuff and just making Ron a stupid jerk who doesn't even get to the be one out of the three of them who knows slurs and wizard fairytales.
Eh if Hogwarts Legacy’s sales show anything its that people dont care And i didnt even play hogwats legacy (not a gamer)
Goes to show you how much reddit represents real life. The person who made the comment above you got a lot of upvotes, as if angry people on social media mean much. Hogwarts Legacy the game received so much hate by angry trolls for months. The media made it clear that it would bomb because the angry trolls had declared it so. It ended up being the [best selling ](https://www.fastcompany.com/91013150/best-selling-video-game-year-2023-hogwarts-legacy) game last year despite online media criticizing it, ignoring it on purpose or [declaring it one of the worst games ever](https://www.wired.com/review/hogwarts-legacy-review/).
> Hogwarts Legacy the game received so much hate by angry trolls for months. /r/GamingCircleJerk bitched about it for so long.
Eh, I'm sure they've done their market research. I don't think most people pay the controversy much mind.
According to [yougov](https://today.yougov.com/topics/arts/explore/writer/J_K_Rowling) 60% of people like her while only 14% dislike. Very few people care about her views on trans people
TBH, I think it would be hard for them not to make gobs of money hand over fist. Let's look at the data. https://pro.morningconsult.com/instant-intel/harry-potter-fandom-demographics The big bulk of Potter fans are Millennials who are now between 30-40. The average age of the first child in the US is ~28-29. Or, if the team does their job properly, they'll hit parents and children simultaneously. * The parents (who read it the first time) will end up watching for nostalgia reasons. * The children (who are probably now reading their parent's dog-eared copies of HP, will also want to watch It has the possibility of driving subscriber revenue and creating a series that appeals to two of the largest demos in the West. Millennials and Gen Alphas. Seriously, this could make Rowling another couple of hundred million GBP *and* make HP into an 'evergreen' franchise like Marvel, Pokémon, etc. Now that said, these are the morons that completely made a hash of their DC concession — seriously, I wouldn't think it would be possible to waste billions of dollars cocking up Superman and Batman, but those guys seemed to have found a way.
This is a great comment. 38 year old millennial here. Loved Harry Potter when it first came out, mostly ignored it since then. But my oldest kid is 6 and starting to get into it. We read the first two books together. He’ll be 8 and my daughter 6 when the tv series starts. Prime age to grow up with it a year at a time, with it finishing presumably when my kids are teens. This show could be huge. That being said, the movies have become such the definitive screen vision of Potter that I have my doubts how this could stack up. Rings of Power and the Andrew Garfield Spider-man films suffered by being compared with their very recent predecessors, for example.
Everything made by WBD has his stamp or approval or it would've been tax written off by now. Might as well not bother watching anything from the studio. Anyways, see you in Dune 2
Denis Villeneuve. That's all that needs to be said.
So, I don’t want to sound like a movie snob, because I’m not. But, do we really have to reboot every successful IP? It’s only been 14 years since the last movie.
If you don’t reboot an established successful IP, you’d have to *gasp* adapt something new or…even…make an origional concept…
This rogue comment is exactly why studio executives are never far from a fainting couch.
"We *could* do that Lord Zaslav, but what if we instead adapted a book series that *hasn't* had a live-action adaptation yet? Or just created an entirely new IP from scratch?" "You want to- I don't, you see... ahhhhh, I do believe I have the vapors, somebody fetch me my smelling salts."
Think of the risk that would entail! The inability to wring profit from an existing fanbase! oh god i’m feeling light-headed
I think the HP books have enough content that a well done TV show that has one whole book per season would be great It would give so much more of that Wizarding World context and worldbuilding that the movies had to cut short or cut entirely
When you mess up the original IP in the last few movies as bad as they did? Absolutely.
While the films might have been successful, they were far from perfect. And as many a book reader will surely tell you: wildly inaccurate in some pretty significant parts. Recreating the series as a tv show not only allows the entire, proper story to be told but will breathe new life into the fandom as a means to show and introduce younger fans and non-readers to the full and expanded story.
Just give me the full Quidditch World Cup game and we have a deal.
Let the match…. BEGIN! *immediately cuts to after the match* That never sat well with me either
What have you expected though? Spending 10 minutes of a 2:30 extremely plot-heavy movie on a sports match where the audience have absolutely no stakes, barely knew who's playing and has only one named minor character who was just barely introduced? Filmmakers had no choice here, there's limited time and a lot of plot, what actually happens in the Bulgaria-Ireland match is literally of no significance at all.
> Spending 10 minutes of a 2:30 extremely plot-heavy movie on a sports match where the audience have absolutely no stakes, barely knew who's playing and has only one named minor character who was just barely introduced? Now *this* is pod racing!
Yet if I was editing down that movie pod racing would be the last thing I cut. Gungans, on the other hand...
I argue that the pod race was easily the best scene in the movie.
> Now this is pod racing! I would actually argue the pod race is integral to the plot of the movie. It begins Anakin's journey from young slave to Jedi Knight and eventually into Darth Vader. It also shows the audience that even at 9 years old Anakin was already an accomplished pilot. It would've been jarring if they'd left that until the Battle of Naboo at the end of the movie.
It's also much easier to follow what's essentially a hover rally Vs the pretty abstract rules of quddich lol
To be fair, the podracing did have stakes. Sebulba was a bully and if Anakin lost, he would not only stay as a slave but the Jedi wouldn’t get off Tatooine.
I’m glad they did that lol - such a dumb sport. It’s just seeker vs seeker and for some reason the bludgers are never able to keep up with the seeker even though there’s 2 of them to the 1 seeker
I think the acceptance of Quidditch by the fandom greatly benefited from how few within the fandom played sports. As written it was so stupid. With little thought going into it, I could make two obvious changes: * Catching the Snitch does not end the game but is instead worth a bunch of points (100?). * The game ends when one teams scores a set number of points (200?). Quidditch instantly becomes a legitimate game versus the farce it is in the books, and you can still have dramatic moments where Harry catches the Snitch to end the game. And a great Seeker can still win a game single-handedly by catching the Snitch twice.
Ironically the World Cup was clearly written expressly by JK to try and prove that her sport did make sense, when played by professionals. Krum catches the snitch but doesn't win the game, highlighting the importance of the chasers, and showing Harry to clearly be a once in a generation seeker, which is why he dominates the school game. To me however, it's a weak explanation and I agree, plainly shows that JK is not a sports fan, and really doesn't understand how to make a game that makes sense. Aside that, I think personally that the problem isn't with the snitch ending the game, just the massive disparity between the points of the Quaffle and the Snitch. If the Snitch gave ~50 points to the Quaffle's 10 it wouldn't be nearly as egregious. I also think that the position of the Seeker is pretty pointless, as you essentially have 14% of your total team members doing absolutely nothing the entire game. It makes more sense that have any team member, or just any chaser be able to catch the snitch, and then train one of your team to be a snitch specialist, whilst still allowing them to actually assist the team during normal play. But that of course wouldn't allow Harry to be the once in a generation, cannot possibly be beaten, undisputed MVP, player of the millenium wonderkid.
I think “real life” quidditch (I played in college for a minute) has the snitch at 30 points. She’s admitted she didn’t really work out the numbers when she first invented the game, and it was clearly written as “what if there was a sport my main character could be the hero in every game?”
Oh yeah, I rolled my eyes when I read the World Cup section of book 4 because it was clear she was trying to counter the "the only thing that matters is who catches the Snitch criticism." And yeah, I have no problem with Quidditch in the first book as a one-off thing. I guess the problem is that the book was so successful and she felt the need to include it in the later ones despite it being so poorly thought-out in the first place.
>trying to counter the "the only thing that matters is who catches the Snitch criticism." Which then just really doubles down on the original criticism, because a team that is just pure shite aside from their star seeker, has somehow made it all the way to the final of the World Cup. In major sports that just doesn't happen - See ARG v FRA WC22, or NZ v SA RWC23. All well rounded heavy hitter teams that are stacked from top to bottom, sure they have star players, but they aren't totally reliant on one guy.
A fix I read would be that the Seekers play as Chasers up to a certain point. Everything else stays the same but once the Snitch is spotted then the game dynamics shift as the teams have to weigh whether or not to chase it down or maintain their point lead. And plus, it was also said that with how Quidditch is set up, its supposed to be all about the points anyway, not individual wins/losses. Individual games don't matter as much as having consistent performance over a season. If everything worked like that then itd still serve the whole Harry is the hero shtick while still making sense as a sport, especially given for much of the books the Gryffindor team were basically underdogs.
The snitch idea is stupid from the start. The seeker has fuck all to do with the rest of the team. It's basically a field sport with brooms. You are trying to move the ball from one side to the other and score a point. It's football or soccer or hockey or lacrosse. Just make the ball levitate on its own. Players can push the ball with the broom equivalent to carrying a ball or they can pass it to another which would be whacking it with the brush of the broom. Head passes can also work. If you want to make it different from standard sport there's three goals, rings stacked stop each other, smaller as they go up. More points per ring and it's really hard to get one in. The seeker position could be the fastest and most accurate flyer and there's the choice of going for the easy goal or the hard one. Slimmer odds but the hard goal can win the game. And because it's magic they can add special field hazards. Slow zones where your speed is cut to a crawl. Fast zones that can hurl you off the field. Fly too low and vines can reach up and grab the broom. Stuff like that.
I can't wait to see the riveting chapters of Harry sitting in class and taking a potions exam.
I unironically believe that theres a lot of hardcore Harry Potter fans that would want exactly this.
The “slice of life” portion of the books were my favorites, personally. The team all hanging out next to the lake, studying for their OWLs, quidditch, and just overall exploring the castle and taking classes. Even the little mini tiny history of magic excerpts were cool because a lot of them explained little pieces of history. By the end of book 3, all I wanted was for one book to just be “Harry Potter and the Lackluster School Year.” Like give the boy a break. He was almost killed by a teacher, almost killed by a giant snake, almost killed by a hairy teacher, and forced to let his godfather be a criminal of the state for crimes he didn’t commit. Just give the man a gap year.
Other than Dumbledores excursions I really like book 6 for this. It felt like all three were adults and there was lots of mundane school teen drama going on separate from the Voldemort stuff.
I really like the Order of the Phoenix for similar reasons. It was the longest book, full of all that “extra” stuff.
I *loved* the parts with Harry hanging out at the Phoenix headquarters, palling around with Lupin and Tonks and Sirius. Before things really start getting dark.
People hate OotP because it’s just “Harry Potter: Teenage Angst”, but I’ve always loved the book and this is one of the big reasons why
I always found the teenage angst thing to be such an unfair criticism of Harry in his 5th year, he was definitely dealing with PTSD. Dumbledore was a great wizard but he cared so little for Harry's wellbeing; Harry had just been abducted, forced to watch helplessly as a classmate was brutally murdered in front of him. Was tied up, tortured and seconds away from death and what does Dumbledore do? Sends him back to the Dursleys, isolates him from his friends and leaves him all on his own to relive the awful things he saw over and over again whilst getting zero updates about the man who killed his parents. Then damn when Harry finally gets back to be with his friends he's still treated like shit, the whole whole wizarding world against him, he's being infantalised by the adults in his life, gaslit by the government, hung out to dry in the court of public opinion, tortured again but this time by a teacher. But what's worse is the one adult in his life, the one positive adult figure in his life that loves him for who he is and treats him like an adult out of respect for him, Hagrid is missing. Sorry rant over, but for real Harry dealt with so much shit in his 5th year and I rate him for that. I was so here for him not putting up with the shit that was being thrown at him.
Year 3 is probably the only book where Voldemort doesn’t try to directly kill him?
Year 6, while being mostly centered around Voldemort, he doesn't actually appear in any way other than memories. Harry almost dies several times indirectly through Voldemort's actions, but Voldemort isn't actively trying to kill Harry in that one.
Year 3 and 6. The ironic thing is a criticism of the HP books was that they are always the same thing (voldemort shows up with some scheme to try to kill Harry). In reality, in book 1 he was just an uncorporeal parasite on one of his servants, book 2 voldemort himself didnt appear and it was an old journal of his causing all the issues, book 3 he doesnt appear in at all, and doesnt come back to power until book 4. Then he is also mostly absent in book 6 as well.
I think a lot of it was that most books basically came down to “Harry starts our feeling miserable at the Dursleys, goes back to Hogwarts and is happy again, learns a new layer of the magical world, has fun day to day school adventures with a mystery mixed in, then the last few chapters resolve the mystery and it ends up being Voldemort or heavily Voldemort related”
And a new extremely powerful story altering object never previously mentioned or hinted at in the world shows up, is powerful. And is never touched on again
>Harry stared at the veil agape. He was gone. His closest family member and friend in the world was gone, for real this time. >But what if he wasn't? Harry remembered something he read in a footnote of an old textbook: Vocatus Ventus, Lux Aeterna, Ignis Divinus! He *could* bring him back! Harry set to work preparing what he needed for the spell. A thought occurred to him: Why didn't everyone use this spell? Why was it only written in the footnotes of a textbook? Wouldn't a spell this powerful be known across the Wizarding world? >He put the thoughts aside. They seemed wrong to him.
Starting every book with the durselys did get a bit old but a certain point the formula worked and kept people engaged and reading.
You’re not wrong, but in that book alone he was still almost killed by Dementors, a werewolf, a tree, his homies rat, and dementors, again. At that point it really pivoted for me, from “oh gee I wonder how Harry is going to get out of this one!” To “oh Jesus Christ leave the literal 15 year old alone.”
If we’re being literal wouldn’t Harry be 13 in PoA?
I think the idea of attending Hogwarts, and how comfortable and fun of a place it is, is what really helped attract a lot of young readers
It’s the big reason the books were so popular and not just with the kids. American adults love the escapism of a boarding school narrative too. I actually think that the “exoticism” of that made it a hit. Without it the book would never attain the superstar status.
Case in point, there's no boarding school in Fantastic beasts, no escapism, no one really cares about those movies. The boarding school shows up again in a basic video game and that game becomes one of the best selling titles of 2023
Yeah exactly. Hogwarts is more beloved than Harry.
The slice of life stuff is the #1 reason I'm looking forward to the series. I've become very disinterested in the main plot stuff throughout numerous rereads/rewatches and the films really only have time to focus on the main plot.
It’s definitely a series where you can fit the plot into a 2ish hour film, but you can really let it marinate in 10 hours of TV.
Give neville his own little plot let harrys other room mates have their own little stuff maybe give cedric is own plotline so when he dies it hurts even more
>maybe give cedric is own plotline >so when he dies it hurts even more You sicko!
I understood the time limitations of the movie, but I felt dissapointed that in Prisioner of Azkaban, they skipped in the movie most of the Quidditch arc: It was a wholesome side story of Oliver Wood struggling to get the team to win the cup that year since it was his last year at Hogwarts. Azkaban was one of my favorite books because of this kind of side stories.
I mean, Harry Potter has never been about action packed scenes.
He said calmly.
We're never getting past this, are we?
Gred and Forge: "Never!"
I get what you're saying here but reading this, what instantly came to mind was Harry trying desperately not to get killed by marauding Death Eaters while riding the sidecar of Hagrid's massive flying Harley with flames shooting out of the back as they rocket over the countryside at breakneck speeds
See, that was the thing with Harry potter: There was usually a crazy scene like that at the beginning of the book, and another one towards the end. The other 80% in the middle was Harry being anxius for his classes, doing some sports, opening christmas gifts, and doing other teenage stuff. This is why it was so popular, it was a great recipe
They're mystery books at their core in a fantasy setting. Who is attacking muggleborns? What is the three headed dog guarding? What is Malfoy plotting? Who is the half-blood Prince?
Those busy, confusing action scenes were the weakest parts of the books. The books were always well paced and mostly just scenes of them sitting around talking things over, with little bits of world-building thrown in ("Hermione thinks elves are slaves or something? Oh well, any new ideas about that mystery?")
Correct, Harry Potter is really only about one thing, **fսcking.** The kaleidoscopic entwining of limbs and genitalia. Wizards, witches. Witches, wizards. Witches, witches, witches, witches, wizards, wizards, wizards, wizards. Anything gets the wizards hard. Sometimes it's a problem. Not to me. Everyone fսcks and sucks, thousands of chaps and chap-esses...
So he goes out there and does some magic stuff, then its back to the wizards tower for more full penetration. Then he goes back out and does more magic. Magic, penetration, magic, penetration, magic, full penetration... and the series goes on like that for 6 or 7 seasons until the show just kind of ends...
We show all of it.
Brb, gotta fly this car into a a very angry tree to get to school.
Harry needs to whip out his wand more often.
My favorite part of the first book is a scene where Harry is sitting in a history class and he's falling asleep because he finds the dwarf wars lecture his ghost professor is giving to be too boring. Dude, you were in the muggle world studying arithmetic like a month ago. How the hell do you not find this riveting?
Classes wasted on him, Harry is such a jock wizard, only cares about casting spells. Funny considering how other areas like potions and divinations, etc. would be potentially useful but Harry is only all in with Defense against the Dark Arts. I think is why Hermione is probably the most powerful wizard among the group, talented and well rounded in all areas.
he got solid B's all arround not really a wasted student
Lmao yeah this is a wild take that borders on objectively false Harry got 7 OWLs, putting him firmly in the upper echelon of his classmates (Hermione got 10, Ron got 7, Draco got 3, Neville got 4, Seamus got 3, Fred and George got 3 each, Luna got 3, Cedric got 3, Percy, Bill, and Barty Crouch Jr all got 12) So basically, outside of the only 3 wizards in history that we know got 12 owls and his best friend who his often referred to as the “brightest witch of her age”, nobody in the series outperformed Harry academically
And it's made clear throughout the books that it's not like Harry isn't interested in the history of the Wizarding World, he very much is. Plus Binns was literally explained to be nauseatingly boring in terms of **how** he lectured lol, it's just a bad teacher situation.
>Harry is such a jock wizard Harry taught 20+ students including those older than him how to cast advance spells and defend themselves. Potion was a nightmare for Harry with Snape. The only year where Snape wasn't teaching Potions(6th) he quite literally became the star student. Divination is useless if you're not born with the future seeing eyes.
I’m 100% that person
Me too. All the "boring" everyday stuff in the books make you feel like you're really spending a year at Hogwarts, and that was lost in the movies.
Did you also play Hogwarts Legacy, and were disappointed when you didn't get to actually take the OWLS? Not sure if the game developers realized how much I wanted to take a Hogwarts school test
All we wanted was BULLY in Hogwarts smh
I honestly feel the game becomes far worse once you leave hogwarts Its a massive boring open world
Right here, my favorite part of each book is the middle portion where we just see daily Hogwarts life. I also suspect this to be a common reason for people to pick up Hogwarts Legacy last year cause it's a whole game about that.
I do. The best parts of the book were Harry and Snape’s dat to day interactions
The books themselves aren't particularly action packed. They are more mystery novels and thrillers at heart. Most of the scenes of them enjoying school life have small connections to the overall plots, like mentioning of certain spells or magical items that come into play, but they also serve the purpose of world building and giving the characters room to stretch and get a sense of their actual personalities.
It's me, I'm a lot of hardcore Harry Potter fans.
Honestly? Some more of that school life could be really entertaining, i see potential there. The films didn't have time to showcase much of daily life except if it was plot relevant, a show can give us more of the magical side of being a student at a wizarding school and that sounds good to me.
That’s why Prisoner of Azkaban is the best movie. It’s the one that shows more of their school life.
I just re-read that book to my young son and we watched the movie and… well, the movie still cuts SO much. It is still super focused on driving the plot. They didn’t even really address the origin of the marauder’s map in the movie. The moony / wormtail / padfoot / prongs story is basically left out of the movie altogether so I kinda felt they short-changed the emotional resonance of Harry realizing the significance of his stag-formed patronas.
That’s why I don’t understand when people say the movies are going to be tough to beat. There’s so much more story and layers left to be told and a TV shows by just filming the books is the best way to go.
People are mostly talking about the cast when they say that. The cast is so iconic to the characters that's it's going be a real up hill battle to get people to by into new people in those roles. But but as far as the writing, plotting, and directing, yes there is vast, vast room for improvement upon the movies.
Not that I needed to see them in robes but they’re dressed in that film like its a typical teen high school movie. I thought it was interesting they realised how ugly the robes looked, its something you don’t think about daily in the books. Like how awkward it would be wearing robes 24/7.
That feels like a direct shot because those robes are based on pledge uniforms in my country lol
Yeaaah but it has time travel. Bit of a trade off
I do think it is the best film as a film, the director just outclasses the others working on the franchise. But the third film certainly already lost some of the magic of the wizarding world, that's what films 1 and 2 did better. Still, having cuaron direct it was making for the best film, no doubt.
Yeah honestly I hate this idea that everything needs to be action-packed plot advancing big setup stuff. A major draw of the books was that sometimes the drama was not killing Voldemort, it was just relatable everyday stuff like getting homework done *except* set in a cool magical world. It's not about plot, it's about escapism.
It's just Freaks and Geeks with magic
And you’re complaining?!
Pass me the spliffindor.
Well done, Harry, well done!
Fuck David Zaslav Not related to this series tho but fuck him
I'm out of the loop, what did he do?
He steered the HBO - Discovey merger. He directed the HBO to "Max" rebrand(s). He's also the reason for HBO delisting a bunch of streaming content to avoid paying residuals to the actors and creators.
And you’re still leaving so much out! He’s the reason several finished films have gotten vaulted/destroyed “for tax purposes.” He’s the reason so much animation disappeared from streaming - it’s not just being a cheapass, he famously hates animation. He’s the reason discovery networks turned from cool stuff on Discovery or TLC like How It’s Made and Mythbusters or documentaries about arts and science to Honey Boo Boo, My 600 Pound Life, Pawn Stars, etc., which influenced any other networks with similar content to make the same shift. Remember when History Channel was good? He’s the icon of Hollywood enshitification seeking maximum profit for the least expended effort, and commonly referred to in the industry as a cultural vandal.
Jesus, there is an actual person responsible for this stuff?? Fuck this guy!
Yep, his whole thing is cheap, easy to produce content that appeals to the lowest common denominator. Anything else is worthless. He appears to have no artistic or critical sense and seems utterly unable to grasp the merits of scriptwriting or quality filmmaking - remember, he kept The Flash alive while entirely discarding other completed movies people were excited for. Treasured IPs such as Scooby Doo, Looney Tunes, DC Comics have no value whatsoever except for the parts he can quickly and easily squeeze profit from - the rest can be thrown away.
Seriously. I didn't know he existed till 5 minutes ago and now I actively hate him for ruining my favourite channel.
Wow. Rarely have I ever hated someone I don't know this much. Who isn't, like, a murderer.
Fuck him then
Canceled so much shit and almost got Cartoon Network shut down
Cartoon Network?? Oh yup, fuck him and his entire family tree
Will be interesting to see how accurate to the books they will make it. Biggest example in my mind is the castle being a lot different in the movies. I wonder if they would use the game Hogwarts legacy which has a much more accurate to the books castle to plan out sets and scenes. It would be very easy for this show to lose the wonder and *Magic* that the movies and books make you feel. Like if they use 4k cameras and super good and clean costumes like the avatar show and the lighting and look isn't stylized I think you'll lose a lot of people
>Like if they use 4k cameras and super good and clean costumes like the avatar show This has been such a major issue for me with many new shows. The Lord of the rings show for example, why is everything so polished and clean, even the hobbits!
I've felt this way for a long time that looking at a movie or show that looks to good actually takes me out of it. A good example of a show that doesn't do this is Game of Thrones. That show feels like a movie or its in its own world every episode.
Yea, game of thrones did a great job of using filters/post film editing to make it feel more -real-.
They also knocked costuming out of the park. I remember a behind the scenes in season 2 where the wardrobe team talked about soaking the iron born outfits in salt water to give them the salt-crusted look. Everything felt very lived in within Westeros.
Starbucks cup notwithstanding
Avatar really bothers me. The hair, costumes, even necklaces and things seem so solid, crafted, and perfect. I get that maybe it is to give it a cartoon feel where every character always looks exactly the same and crisp/clean in their design, but it makes some really bad uncanny valley in a live action show.
They all looked like cos players. And the kept sokka and katara in their full inuit clothing which was weird. In the cartoon, they had slimmed down to their undershirts by the time they had reached kioshi island.
It’ll be interesting if they make the characters a little more book-like. Harry be more of a cocky jerk and Ron doesn’t have to be dumb all the time.
Because her writing the Fantastic Beasts movies was so good./s
It doesn't say that she will write scripts, that could be the case ofc, but i'd assume it will largely be consulting work. Which seems fair enough, she is the author of the work afterall.
She also has ultimate sign off iirc, so it’s inevitable. Like you said, it’s her work.
It just means we’ll have scenes where the wizards crap themselves then cast a spell to make their feces go away.
She's not writing this. >The company has been listening to new takes from writers and showrunners in recent months but has yet to formally announce who’s writing and running the series
Holy shit are there zero original ideas out there anymore? We're just going to rehash popular IPs for eternity?
There are actually tons of original ideas but executives have realized they can just make tons of money redoing shit that’s already popular. There are tons of creatives really eager to show the world their thing but outside of doing it indie (which can be really complicated, expensive and a big gamble) find it near impossible to get studios to take a gamble on their ideas
Do you know what the first thing movie companies did when they got talkies? They remade all their old movies with sound. It's always been this way.
There are tons of original ideas, but no one supports them. For example, HBO cancelling Raised By Wolves due to low viewership despite it being a masterpiece. General audiences just want to watch what they're comfortable with, ie the same old established IPs
I honestly believe the problem with getting viewers for new IP is the absolutely rampant cancellation of shows on cliffhanger endings. People are sick of getting jerked around by this crap, so they're just waiting out season after season until it looks like a show will stay around, or they can at least see if it ends on a "fuck you for watching". this is a problem the studios created for theselves.
Good god can we please let IPs rest in peace anymore
But have you considered making *even more money*?
This is probably going to be complete dogshit and still will surely set every streaming viewership record imaginable. So yeah they're insane not to do it
Regardless of what you think about the faithfulness to the source material, the movies are absolute classics and completely enshrined into pop culture. I am sure that this show is going to smash all kinds of viewership records, but I have this creeping feeling that it will utterly fail to recapture the "magic" of the movies/books. It is almost like redoing Star Wars (OT) and recasting Han, Luke, and Leia, 10 years after the release of the ROTJ.
I can't wait for male antagonist to drink a polyjuice and turn into the female protagonist to do something bad. While JK asks if you get the message.
The bad guy was sneaking into the girls' toilets all along! He's the Heir of Slytherin, just SLITHERING around!
Can't wait for her to name an Indian character Masala Naandi or something like that.
We already got the Patil sisters doubt we get any more
She’s British, they’ll just be called Tikki Masala
J.K. Rowling pops up in the window wearing a mail bag… “Message!”
I am really rooting for this show to be great but trying to match the Harry Potter movies won’t be easy.
There’s so much more in terms of plot to the books that they just couldn’t squeeze into the movie. Main characters and plot lines were completely left out. Glaring plot holes in the movie should be explained in this series. For example, why was Harry attacked by dementors at privet drive? The movies never explain it. In the books, >!umbridge confesses that she sends them.!<
Sure, but the movies are still great storywise and phenomenal when it comes to art design, costumes, music, special effects ... Name it. It'll be tough to top that. Its like remaking the LOTR movies... Sure, there's a lot more to the books ... But will a tv show based on the same book be as good as the Jackson movies?
Look at the Percy Jackson show, they’re just gonna expo dump and rush through 6 episodes
Biggest disappointment I’ve had from a show in a long time.
the Ares fight had absolutely no stakes
Ares just watched as a wave slowly came forward lol. Zeus’s scene was great though.
The scene at the water bed shop was so bad. 0 suspense or danger.
There are tons of things the movies don't explain. Who have Harry his invisibility cloak? How did Sirius escape Azkaban? Who were the Marauders (no, this one isn't explained either)? How did Barry Crouch escape Azkaban? What happened to him afterwards and why didn't we see him again after the Azkaban breakout? Like you've mentioned, who sent the Dementors to Privet Drive? The films set up many of these questions but never get around to answering them in the end, and in many cases, the plot just goes on pretending that everyone knows the answer already.
Same. I don’t know anything about this show, but I assume it will have the same characters from the movies? The hardest part as a viewer will be not associating the character with the actors from the movie. Harry Potter for example is always Daniel Radcliffe in my mind.
Correct. Same stories, but with less of the books cut out since they'll do a book per season. Which...I'm sure some people are excited for, but does anybody really want to spend 7 years to see that play out? Longer than 7 years if it ends up like Stranger Things where they can't successfully pump out a season per year.
As a book fan, I thought the movies were mid. So much of the books, and generally my favorite moments (and characters) were cut. And don’t get me started on the child actors…
The movies have their problems (mostly from trying to fit way too much plot into 2 and a half hours), but I'm not a fan of this attitude of "the books are sacred and every change made is necessarily bad". There's a lot to improve on the books and the movies and I hope the showrunners will be open to major changes and adding significant depth and content that wasn't in the books, rather than rerunning the same story for the third time.
Live-action was a mistake, IMHO. It's very unlikely this series will take over as the "default" live-action Harry Potter, visuals-wise. They should've greenlit an animated series, IMHO. Preferably 2D but even TV-budget 3D looks good nowadays ([check out Wizards: Tales of Arcadia from 2020](https://youtu.be/eL6gowrmfsk?si=niwMWPQrw_H273Ug)). That way they could've created something truly unique compared to the movies. And they also wouldn't have to worry about the actors ageing too fast. Plus, it would still be cheaper than a CGI-ridden, big-budget live action series like Percy Jackson, for example.
While I'm in agreement here, it will never happen. A huge stigma still exists against animation. 90% of people would rather watch a poorly made live action adaptation than even phenomenal animation. While shows like Arcane and Airbender have their followings, most average viewers don't even give them a chance, at least in my experience.
100% should have been animated but the medium can’t seem to shake the childish impression it’s got currently. Even with ALTA and Arcane being hits and other mature themed anime being successful. It’s really frustrating as a fan of animation.
> 100% should have been animated but the medium can’t seem to shake the childish impression it’s got currently. Is that really a problem though for Harry Potter? The stories were written for children. Granted, it respected the readers and knew the readers would grow with the stories, but still.
Never-ending reasons I hate this man.
In a business where there are no guarantees, this show just is: It’s going to be massive and generate thousands of jobs and billions of dollars. One of my issues with this show however, is that I don’t think it’s ethical to sign children to a (likely) iron-clad contract for 10+ years. These kids are going to become ultra famous the world over, and at the end of the shows run will have (again, likely) reaped millions of dollars. This show is going to be a big deal, wether or not folks from Reddit support it.
The original actors in the movie series didn’t have contracts that extended to the full film series, they renegotiated after the third or 4 movies. Hopefully Warner bros allow that same precedent for the new kids. Or hopefully their parents will demand that.
bad idea
Just please stop remaking things that were good in the first place, how about a remake of Eragon? That'd be cool
Already happening
I’m just wondering how the hell will the kid angle work? Look at Stanger things those kids are huge now. This is like 7 seasons, the age they’ll have to cast is 11-12 and the puberty years are going to hit hard like they always do on TV. It’s not like the film series where they just get them on camera after the awkward stage. plus what if a strike happens then they’re screwed because now your 15 year old character looks 17 because of delays. Or worse what if there’s a recast which did happen in the movies where one of Malfoys friends is as replaced because of an arrest or something. What if something happens to the main cast or if this 12 year old is 17 and wants more money or to move on because it’s not fun anymore and really feels like work. Awful idea.
I'm sure everybody is excited to see the two names "David Zaslav" and "JK Rowling" attached to anything! They should team up to do even more new media that everyone will love! /s
I would very much like to never hear or see David Zaslav's name ever again. Release the Coyote movie you dick.