It’s Harry Potter … but different.
With no new books on the horizon, and with the Fantastic Beasts film franchise sputtering, Warner Bros. made the decision to take Harry Potter where it hadn’t gone before: Television. They’re rebooting the whole franchise as a series for HBO. It’s the same story you know, with each book spread across an entire season of television, with a new cast.
So the first trailer for Harry Potter on TV looks familiar. It’s got all the same beats, just with actors like Dominic McLaughlin in the place of Daniel Radcliffe as Harry. Maybe the biggest change is the show’s title; unlike the film adaptation, the TV show is maintaining J.K. Rowling’s original title for her first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. When that book was first published in America, Scholastic felt kids wouldn’t know what a philosopher was or care about their stone, so they convinced the author to change it to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. In the U.S. the first Harry Potter film kept this alteration because, I guess, that was what American audiences knew that book as.
Watch the full trailer for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone below:
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Here are a whole batch of new images from the show that HBO released in conjunction with the first trailer:
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Images
Harry Potter comes to television with a new series adapted from the first J.K. Rowling novel. Here are the first batch of official images from the show.
And here is the new series’ official synopsis:
There is nothing special about Harry Potter – at least that’s what his Aunt Petunia always says. On his 11th birthday, a letter of admittance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry opens up a hidden world for Harry: one of fun, friendship and magic. But with this new adventure comes great risk as Harry is forced to face a dangerous enemy from his past.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone will debut on HBO and HBO Max on Christmas of this year.
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Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
