HBO is working on a 7 season Harry Potter TV series. Why? The obvious answer is that there’s money in the franchise and in a reboot.
But perhaps more importantly because the movies were not great.
The movies got a collection of casting decisions right – Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Hermione Granger, the first Albus Dumbledore, Bellatrix Lestrange among a few others. They got a bunch of others pretty wrong.
While John Williams’ score was epic, they messed up a fair number of storylines and some epic scenes (e.g., Harry and Voldemort’s last duel) didn’t capture the greatness of the books.
In contrast, the three Lord of the Rings movies, for example, were exceptionally well done. The casting was great, the cinematography was excellent, the storytelling was superb, and the soundtrack was exceptional. It’ll take a brave soul to attempt a reboot of that storyline.
Similarly, despite the trainwreck that was season 8 of Game of Thrones, seasons 1-7 were arguably amongst the greatest TV series seasons of all time. Again, it was an exceptional mix of casting, storytelling, cinematography, and music.
As a result, work on both these franchises have focused on alternate storylines.
It is a good lesson on any kind of work. If it needs to be redone, it wasn’t great work in the first place.
