Currently they are auditioning children aged nine to 11. I think people wildly underestimate what a difficult endeavour filming these movies was (that many child actors over that long!) and how lucky they got with the main cast.
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The casting directors of the original series should get way more credit (it's not even an award category for some reason). For comparison, in the same time frame they were already on to the third James Bond.
Like, yeah, two of the main cast can’t really act. But you know, none of the actors went off the rails, none of them fell out, there wasn’t an awkward period where puberty had hit some but not others: anyone who was in a youth theatre knows this is all SUPER-lucky.
Particularly as they *didn’t know* how it would end when they started casting. Sure, there were some incredibly predictable things: Harry was always going to end up with Ginny, Hermione & Ron were going to pair off. But “you have to deliver your late films around the wand seller’s availability”:!!
I do also just think people hugely underrate Chris Columbus as a director, because his films can be a bit sentimental. But the guy’s record in casting and drawing great performances out of kids is exemplary and I think this series may well prove that.
The first two films are almost from a different 'Young Harry Potter' series, then Cuaron makes the best film, and the rest are good adaptations. I don't know how it works as one series.
👇Show me the person who watched “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” and thought “if anything, this two and a half hour runtime…could be more than twice as long”.
I’ve called eight of the last three streaming recessions (at the time I thought Big Little Lies, which brings an cast of Oscar winners to, bluntly, a Neighbours quality script and plotline, was Peak Streaming), but yes.
There’s clearly still an audience for Harry Potter stuff (see that insane queue at Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross) but I’m just not convinced this will hit the mark. Is it a series for kids who are new to HP? Is it for nostalgic millennials? What is the point of doing this when the films exist?
The later books in the series and commercial temptations are going to make them treat a fairly tightly written and well edited book for 10 year olds like a world building young adult novel and that stuff just… isn’t there in Book 1 (and imo that’s no bad thing!)
As someone reading through endless Quidditch scenes to an eight-year-old at the moment, I can safely say that the one thing the early Potter books do not need is extra screen time.
Occasionally an adult will say to me “they cut a lot out of book one”, and look, I loved the Quidditch and the poltergeist when I read it as the intended audience of “a child”. But anyone over 11 who wants that stuff back in must be a lobotomite.
Compare with the original Tomorrow People! Though none went off the rails, but Kenny was kidnapped by Thames TV from a drama group and really didn't want to be there
One of the crabbe and goyle actors was ditched for having a drug conviction and switched out for some other character without comment lol. Remarkably lucky it was Croyle rather than say the actor playing Neville..
Also a testament to how brevity can save things - in the 12 series show you'd just know thst Gabbe would have a huge narrative arc across a dozen episodes that would be conspicuous if they'd scrapped it 75% of the way through etc
No-one ever wants to give credit to producers, but there's an argument to say no producers have ever done a better job. It can't all be luck - there's some exceptionally good, unglamorous management going on.
(On a more serious note though, totally agree. As with most types of manager, you don’t know how to recognise a good one until you deal with a bad one).
I'm not looking forward to the show for the obvious reasons, but I maintain as I did back when it was announced that this will be something of a disaster from a simple perspective of how exhaustive production would need to be to not end up with a Stranger Things issue
Counterpont: any reasonably talented child actor with the requisite support network would have been fine. None of them are particularly talented actors.
So many moving parts, the least moving of which is the parents & associated support network. I’ve always assumed (with no actual knowledge, admittedly) that was a big part of the casting process.
Game of Thrones got really lucky with talented child actors, but they were also producing a series every year. The standard two years between seasons that we have now would have made it a mess
allegedly Chris Columbus remembered the Culkins and wanted to make sure _that_ didn't happen again - but of course there's a big space between the intent and the reality!
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Incidentally, it might have been better to do this new show as an animation. We are where we are now, of course.
I think I divorced out of that franchise after the one with Gary Oldman and the one with Jim Tavare.
The lessons from Macaulay Culkin and how that level of fame at that young an age can destroy a kid.
(I can't remember his actual age, but I'm pretty sure it was under 18)
Young Jamie Waylett might not have made the cut for Ron, for precisely this kind of reason.