How Will the Harry Potter Series Handle Its Young Stars’ Growth Spurts? HBO’s Casey Bloys Weighs In
There’s a specific kind of mischief that HBO‘s Harry Potter series will need to manage as production gets underway, and that’s the offscreen aging of its young stars.
In September, the network launched a casting call for its TV adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s novels, seeking children who, by April 2025, will be 9 to 11 years old and can feasibly play kid wizards Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. But in recent years, it’s become quite common for cable and streaming series to put two (or even three) years between seasons; in the case of shows like Netflix’s Stranger Things, which is led by young actors, those extra-long hiatuses have led to obvious disparities between the stars’ real ages and the younger ones they’re playing on screen.
“It is something we’re thinking about,” HBO chairman and CEO Casey Bloys told reporters at a recent press conference, when asked how the show will navigate its stars’ growth spurts over time. “One of the ideas we talked about was shooting the first season and the second season very close to each other time-wise, because 11 to 13 is a big jump in kids’ lives. You can get away with 13 to 15, something like that. So we’re going to have to think about scheduling and shooting so that they don’t grow too much between seasons. It is a consideration.”
Not much is currently known about the Harry Potter series’ production timeline, and no casting has been announced as of press time. When the show was formally ordered in April 2023, HBO — well, Max, at the time — made a 10-year commitment to the project, but it has yet to be clarified whether the show will span 10 seasons or simply be on the air for 10 total years, regardless of season count. (Harry Potter‘s previous eight film adaptations released, at most, two years apart between 2001 and 2011.)
And though Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav previously teased a 2026 debut for the series, Bloys’ current estimate is a bit less exact.
“When we started the whole thing, we kind of laid out, ‘Oh, it could probably be ’27, something like that,'” he shared. “But don’t hold me to any of that, because we’re just getting started in the writing and casting process.”
The HBO exec is also unsure that new Harry Potter seasons can realistically drop every year once the show debuts.
“I think an annual schedule will be tough, but it depends on how much is written ahead of time,” he said.
Francesca Gardiner (His Dark Materials) was previously tapped to serve as writer, executive producer and showrunner of the Harry Potter series, while Mark Mylod (Succession, Game of Thrones) will direct multiple episodes and exec-produce. Rowling is also on board as an EP. (With reporting by Dave Nemetz)
Fascinating to see how the modern streaming model has trouble finding it feasible to do what linear television has comfortably been able to do for seventy years. This is the future?
Even Game of Thrones was able to premiere a new season every April (or March 31 for season 3) for the first 6 seasons.
Yeah. It is very weird to say the least that it takes 2 to 3 years to do 10 episodes of a show while stations have been doing 22 episodes for decades. Something like stranger things is way more effects heavy than NCIS, but still.
You mean linear television in the United States, which tends to have huge casts, cheap sets and limited location work. Many British, European, Australian shows scaled back to shorter seasons of 6 to 8 episodes in the 1970s/80s. And even then they didn’t produce a season a year. The big problem with a UK made Harry Potter show is that there are rules around child actors which limit the amount of time they can work to no more than 12 hours a week (and 2 hours a day).
Lots and lots and lots of American shows have plenty of location work and stunning sets. Have you seen the sets on Doctor Odyssey, which will produce 18 episodes this season? Sex and the City had so much lotion work and was, at its height, also producing 18 a year. What about Lost? 22 and almost all location, whith Hawaii also having to pass for many places in the world. And shows used to be shot on film, which is harder to light, had to be developed and, in the past, had to be edited using physically. Even British shows like Downton Abbey managed to premiere a new season yearly. Ther’es really no reason for a series like Wednesday to take 3 years (!) to produce an 8-episode second season. It’s just that streaming loves rising prices and delivering less and less content.
Yeah. The eps on Wednesday did 22 episodes of Smallville every year for 7 years. Not like they don’t know how to do it. And realistically Wednesday has no more special effects or a larger cast than that did. Look at something like 24, they filmed 24 episodes a year and kept it to a clock, meaning they filmed a whole lot more than they needed. Not saying all these shows didn’t have their fillers, crap storyline, or clip shows, but they could do it, had no more less or more cast than 8 to 10 episode shows, and some were effects heavy. Yet they still got it done. Has streaming just become lazy, cheap, greedy, or all of the above?
Nobody wants this series.
Realistically, that probably doesn’t matter because nobody has to want or ask for something to be made in order to potentially enjoy it when it is. You probably won’t enjoy it, nor will many others since rehashed aren’t always well received, yet in this instance a large number of people probably will end up enjoying it quite a bit despite never initially asking for it.
This is SO unneeded
Also, way back in the day the norm was for shows to have 25-40 episodes per season. Gun smoke routinely had 30-39 episodes per season.
Yay! Child labor to boost corporate profits.
Call me crazy but what if they shoot a season each year?
Call me crazy, but why can’t they film a season a year but do the special effects / CGI add ins later?
Bank the seasons and release as the FX gets finished.
“’I think an annual schedule will be tough, but it depends on how much is written ahead of time,’ he said.”
They already have the source material… why is it going to take so long to rewrite the books as episodes??
If they don’t release this yearly, then they can keep it.
I don’t know why this is so hard? “The scripts aren’t written yet.” Hello? The source material is already there and how was it for DECADES one hour drama shows were produced yearly with 22 episodes. They only have to do 8 to 10! WHY is it so difficult!?
I am not interested.
Cast all Asians – most of us age slower. A lot of the 20-year-olds in my mostly East Asian neighbourhood look like early-mid teens, whereas the white adolescents look like they in 30s. Same for blacks too, black don’t crack.