Well, witches and wizards, HBO Max dropped the trailer for its upcoming Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone series yesterday:
I’m not judging a book TV series by its trailer, but …
Don’t get me wrong: I LOVE that Generation Alpha is going to grow up with the Golden Trio (Dominic McLaughlin as Harry Potter, Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley and Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger) and hopefully get the chance to meet all of the characters who did not make it onscreen in the film series, like Peeves the mischievous poltergeist.
Hearing Nick Frost’s first spoken line as Hagrid gave me goosebumps because it was so uncannily like the late, great Robbie Coltrane. And even I can admit that John Lithgow does make for a fine Dumbledore.
What made me want to drown my sorrows in butterbeer or have Snape erase my memory of this teaser is that there just doesn’t seem to be enough to distinguish it from the original films. Aside from the delightful true-to-the-book detail of dirt on Ron’s nose in the first train carriage scene, the adults actually looking like they are in their 30s and Harry being bullied at a Muggle school, it felt like I was watching a trailer for the 2001 film.
And yes, I know that it is to be expected with an adaptation of the same source material, but shall we stop and ask the most obvious question here: Is HBO Max that desperately in need of galleons that they are willing to rob Millennial viewers and their offspring with a nostalgic rehash of content already successfully done two decades ago?
Hollywood can’t use a Time Turner to fix its problems:
Between the requels, the remakes, the gender swaps, etc. of some of Tinseltown’s classics – some of which fare well, like Road House and others which fail miserably, i.e. the Charmed reboot, and I hear Tron: Ares ain’t hot s*** either – it feels like Hollywood execs are ignoring new content to force money from old IPs.
The Wizarding World, which the Harry Potter books and films spawned, is still thriving. Since 1997, when the first book was released, and 2001, when the first movie was released, there have been theme parks, the lukewarm received prequel Fantastic Beasts movies, concerts with orchestras playng the soundtracks, themed stores with hours-long queues in New York, etc., audiobooks with a star-studded voice cast, and the much-debated but still loved play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
My point being: Harry Potter is NOT a brand that needs a revival. The fandom is alive and well and spending their hard-earned adult money on it … I say, as I sip tea out of a Hogwarts-branded mug and wear my matching slippers 😉
The anti-woke J.K.Rowling of it all:
To add salt to the wound, Harry Potter author JK Rowling is just a messy, anti-woke pain in all of our asses who has pissed off her original audience with her appalling views on the transgender community, regularly spouts hate at her former cast in interviews and online and producing this new HBO Max series feels very much like a PR reputation management attempt.
How do we know this? Well, she and her team have cast a black actor as Professor Snape and a multiracial actress as Hermione. Those actors are talented, because they wouldn’t have been cast otherwise, BUT are you really telling me that when the inevitable scene of Harry’s teenage father James and the Marauders hanging Snape in a tree happens, it isn’t because JK and her team want us to see that she is acknowledging a POC audience’s reality of being discriminated against and prove that she is NOT anti-woke?
Come on, guys…
Will we see the magic return on Christmas Day?
I sincerely hope that what we’ve seen so far is just a case of an editor not using his, uh, editing wand correctly …
As a SUPER FAN of the books and films, I will naturally be decked out in full costume and watching the first episode on Christmas Day 2026. I’ll conjure my Rita Skeeter-esque review shortly after, so follow us here, on Instagram and on Facebook to read it.
