Warner Bros. Discovery has abandoned its plans to reboot the Harry Potter franchise as a streaming TV series and canceled its plans to put it on Max.
‘Harry Potter & the Cursed Streaming Service’
It is inarguable that the Harry Potter franchise is one of last century’s most influential, highly profitable pop culture IPs.
Originally created as a novel series by writer J.K. Rowling, the tale of a young British boy who discovers his destiny to become a great wizard and defeat the most evil magic user in the world has gone on to become a multi-billion film franchise, a separate sequel film series, a series of Universal theme parks, multiple incredibly popular video games, and an acclaimed stage production.
Credit: Warner Bros.
At the same time, it is also inarguable that Harry Potter is in need of a reboot. The original child film cast of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint have all grown and moved on from the series and show very little interest in returning for nostalgia’s sake.
Author J.K. Rowling has become a highly controversial figure in culture and is better known for her continually expressed opinions on trans rights on social media than her continued literary output. The Fantastic Beasts series has suffered waning audience interest and dwindling box office grosses, even without getting into the Johnny Depp and Ezra Miller of it all.
Credit: Warner Bros.
But Harry Potter fans were cautiously optimistic when Warner Bros. Discovery announced that the franchise would receive a reboot in the form of a TV series on Max, the company’s highly-promoted streaming service. The series was announced as an ambitious seven-season show (one for each book), with CEO David Zaslav pushing the idea that it could further expand and give more detail to the stories than the limited runtime of the movies.
However, Warner Bros. Discovery has not had great luck in the streaming wars. While the company, via its cable channel HBO, has been a dominant force in prestige linear TV for years and had a generational TV series hit with Game of Thrones, its transition to streaming media has been rocky.
WarnerMedia (the company that would eventually become WBD) originally launched two different streaming services, HBO Go and HBO Now that attempted to capitalize on the well-established Home Box Office name. Both were unsuccessful in competing with Netflix, in large part because of consumer confusion about the difference between the two and their interchangeability. Go and Now were succeeded by HBO Max, which attempted to fuse both services.
Credit: HBO
Bewilderingly, WBD then rebranded as simply “Max” and spent several years pushing the idea of “Max Originals” as the new prestige TV. Essentially, all new shows based on existing IP were to be streaming shows, regardless of the HBO brand or source material.
The Harry Potter TV series was to be one of these Max Originals, but that plan has now been canceled.
‘Harry Potter’: HBO Original
The upcoming Harry Potter TV series reboot has been abruptly canceled as a streaming series and will no longer be marketed as a Max Original (per The Hollywood Reporter). This appears to be a massive strategy change behind the scenes and is affecting multiple in-development shows.
It prequel TV series Welcome to Derry and the DC Universe project Lanterns (based on the Green Lantern comic books) are also being yanked from Max and rehomed on HBO.
Credit: Warner Bros.
It is unclear what caused the abrupt cancelation of streaming plans and why the years-long effort to turn Max into a powerhouse of IP has been abandoned, especially after HBO and Max CEO Casey Bloys said only a few moments ago that “Sarah Aubrey [head of original programming at Max] and her team are trying to focus more on using the Warner Bros. IP to do big tentpole shows.”
Regardless of the cancelation reason, this is a big change for the future of the Harry Potter franchise. Wizarding World has also released its first key personnel on the show, announcing that it will be written and executive-produced by Francesca Gardiner, while Mark Mylod will executive-produce and direct multiple episodes of the series.
Both Gardiner and Mylod are HBO veterans, having worked on Succession, Game of Thrones, and The Last of Us, so it’s clear that the company is putting some real weight behind this.
Credit: Warner Bros.
The official description of the Harry Potter TV series, no longer streaming and definitely now an HBO show, reads:
The series will be a faithful adaptation of the beloved “Harry Potter” book series by author and executive producer J.K. Rowling. The series will feature a new cast to lead a new generation of fandom, full of the fantastic detail and much-loved characters “Harry Potter” fans have loved for over twenty-five years. Each season will bring “Harry Potter” and these incredible adventures to new audiences around the world, while the original, classic and cherished films will remain at the core of the franchise and available to watch globally.
