HBO’s Harry Potter series is bound to fail for one big reason, and it’s not JK Rowling or Snape.
Posted by Jonathan Klotz | Published
Harry Potter returns. If it was in POG form, everyone would be very happy. Warner Bros. has dropped the first trailer for the upcoming HBO Max series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stonewhich has sparked a new round of debates about whether or not the series should be boycotted because of JK Rowling’s beliefs and who wanted the series in the first place.
Here’s the trailer…
Regardless of how you feel about The Boy Who Lived or the rich and famous author who created the most poorly designed game in literature, it may be comforting to know that Warner Bros. it will fail spectacularly, and has nothing to do with anyone’s ideas. It’s about money. A lot of money. In fact, it is unlikely that people will watch a new broadcast series to break up, and not to think about making a profit.
The Most Expensive Entertainment Project in History
The 2001 amendment of the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone made billions of dollars on a budget of $125 million. By comparison, the HBO Max series has a budget of around $100 million. For each episode.
That’s before the marketing blitz you can’t get away from, even if you close your eyes while sitting in your little room under the stairs. To put this into perspective, Warner Bros. spends more money on upcoming broadcast series than any studio has ever spent on a single piece of entertainment. Series, movie, Eras Tour, DinotopiaIt doesn’t matter, nothing will come close to the money that Warner Bros. said.
If you watch the first trailer, it feels like the movie version has fallen somewhere else. Everything looks similar to the original film, but a little toned down.
The actors look like their film counterparts. The most notable exception is Snape, who is also the worst character in the race exchange series when you worry about things like why everyone blames him for no real reason, or why James Potter bullies him. It’s a puzzling choice in a trailer full of confusing choices.
Yer A Remake Harry!
To its credit, the trailer tries to answer the question of why the series was made. With one season covering each book, finally, the little details that Potterheads have been paying attention to for generations will get to leave the page. From the big changes, Headless Nick’s birthday party, to the smaller, quieter changes of the later novels, an accurate adaptation of a book can only be done as a series.
Even though Warner Bros. is making the biggest entertainment project since the Romans built the Colosseum, the first trailer can’t shake the nagging feeling that it’s going to fail. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone will be seen by millions and millions of people around the world, but with a total price close to $ 4 billion, it seems unlikely that it will be a financial success, which, as we all know, is unfortunately the only kind of success that matters to studios.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone coming to HBO Max around Christmas 2026.
