'Harry Potter' books will be adapted into a decade-long TV series

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/13/1169673536/harry-potter-tv-show-jk-rowling-max

by andsoitis • 3 years ago

42 34 3 years ago

andsoitis• 3 years ago

"Max's commitment to preserving the integrity of my books is important to me, and I'm looking forward to being part of this new adaptation which will allow for a degree of depth and detail only afforded by a long form television series," Rowling said in the press release announcing the show.

slickdork• 3 years ago

Oh, dang. The screenwriting she's done for fantastic beasts is not on par with her novel writing.

If she's something like a show runner here with hands on each script, it would make the series suffer. Some people are great at story tellingin one medium but that doesn't always translate.

fakedang• 3 years ago

Honestly, she just hit the lottery with a reasonably good story at a pivotal time. The late 90s to the late 2000s was the one period in human history with maximum teenage readership. Paper books were still in vogue, bookshops were still a thing not being swallowed by Amazon, a lot of cheap paperbacks and copies were appearing in the emerging market countries, reading was significantly encouraged at schools, with many places stocking Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Goosebumps and the likes in an effort to encourage teen readership. Also, no mobile devices!

I doubt we'll ever get a period like that ever again. Those 2 or 3 decades were the peak for writers. Almost every prolific writer of that time with a reasonably good (not great) hand at writing could mint money. It's no surprise that some of the biggest hit authors of that time were Rowling (catering to the teen market in general, with a fantasy theme that easily mirrors school - unlike LOTR), Danielle Steele (catering to the female teen market) and Tom Clancy (catering to the male teen market).

chatmasta• 3 years ago

I assumed that statement meant she would be involved similarly to how she was with the movies, when she didn't do any screenwriting AFAICT (because the movies were faithful adaptations of the books, so there wasn't much to write).

It seems like the TV series will also be an adaptation of the books, which means there won't be any need for new stories like there was with Fantastic Beasts.

I guess it will be just like the movies, but without the need to cut much from the story. Sounds pretty cool tbh.

warning26• 3 years ago

Exciting! The movies had a specific interpretation which felt inaccurate at a lot of points, so I'd love to see another go.

shaky-carrousel• 3 years ago

HARRY! DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE? asked Dumbledore calmly.

KyeRussell• 3 years ago

Harry pocketed it.

firstSpeaker• 3 years ago

This would be very much welcome. Watching this in adulthood while I read the book when I was not!

Slow_Hand• 3 years ago

I grew up reading the books, but lost interest in the movies (or perhaps aged-out of them) after the fourth film. I'm excited by the possibility of telling the story in a way that allows them to breathe more.

It's not that I think the movies didn't serve the stories well, but I love the potential of long-form cinematic storytelling. That's much more my mode these days. I'm curious to see what changes in tone they choose to make, or rather, what they intend to do differently.

danny_codes• 3 years ago

The 4th movie definitely didn't serve the story well. That movie is just bad.

IMO the Harry Potter movies suffered from: (1) switching directors between movies, causing tonal consistency problems (2) trying to compress long novels into a 2 hour runtime. The first 3 books are _just_ short enough that this could possibly work, but books 4-7 are just not going to fit. They got this split right-ish by splitting book 7, but books 4,5, and 6 suffered for it. (3) The director of the 4th movie _didn't read the book_. What a call! Imagine if Peter Jackson hadn't read Lord of the Rings but just went for it.

truculent• 3 years ago

I broadly agree, but the third film is genuinely excellent and while consistent direction might have aided the franchise as a whole, it would have robbed us of the best film.

bigtex88• 3 years ago

Really wish they were tackling literally anything else in the world of HP. We have the movies, we have the books. We know need a TV show rehashing the same things?

It just screams laziness and as a fan of the HP world it's a disappointment to not get to learn anything else about the Wizarding World.

klyrs• 3 years ago

Agreed, I think that the Star Wars miniseries are in many ways better than the original movies. I would love to watch a season of Hagrid's backstory

neaden• 3 years ago

The movies got ridiculously lucky in casting the main three child stars, who all did a great job, avoided any scandals, and have turned out to be by all appearances happy, well adjusted adults. I think this was mostly from luck however, and trying to do the same thing with a larger cast, over 10 years, with increased scrutiny and social media just seems like a recipe for a disaster. The same thing for the adults, who are they going to find willing to take 10 years to be Snape, knowing that everyone is going to constantly compare them to the late great Alan Rickman?

lapcat• 3 years ago

Well, Daniel Radcliffe said he was an alcoholic and drank on the Harry Potter film set.

bluefirebrand• 3 years ago

Tom Felton (Malfoy) wrote a book about his struggles after the series.

Also a lot of alcoholism too apparently.

ChuckNorris893• 3 years ago

Is there anyone in the UK who doesn't drink regularly?

Where I live almost every day after work some colleagues regularly grab a beer.

tomkarho• 3 years ago

No to mention his more recent commentary

kelipso• 3 years ago

Stranger Things seems to be doing fine.. I'm sure there are lots of other recent long running shows with kids in it that are doing fine too.

ChuckNorris893• 3 years ago

I doubt all those child start had perfect lives. I think they were lucky they didn't grow up in the toxic social media world where you had to be online 24/7. They wrapped up the last movie just before social media peaked.

manquer2• 3 years ago

Miley Cyrus and here TV series became popular in the same era , the transformation was drastic .

Emma Watson or Daniel Radcliffe no doubt didn’t have perfect lives as child stars but they have handled their stardom far better than their peers from the same time

dagorenouf2• 3 years ago

I'm pleasantly surprised that J.K Rowling will have creative control over this. Hopefully this won't be as bad as the Ring of Power series.

paxys• 3 years ago

Looking at how the Fantastic Beasts series turned out, I'm not sure if her involvement is actually a positive.

dagorenouf2• 3 years ago

I was referring to the over-the-top woke stuff that made it hard to believe at times. But yeah it's no guarantee. Ideally she shouldn't have control, just veto power.

hammyhavoc2• 3 years ago

Have you forgotten that she does screenwriting for Fantastic Beasts? Nothing to be excited about.

ss108• 3 years ago

This seems like a good opportunity to ask if there are any other Wizard People enjoyers here

voltaireodactyl• 3 years ago

“The ugliest boy in the world has the ball, and he’s got a mouth full of driftwood he’s calling teeth.”

ei8ths• 3 years ago

a decade long, good grief.

'Harry Potter' books will be adapted into a decade-long TV series

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