HBO released the first official teaser for its upcoming Harry Potter TV series, which also included the reveal that fans will get to see it before the end of the year, as it will premiere on Dec. 25. Each season of the series is expected to adapt one book in the series for each season, and the books each unfolded over the course of a school year at Hogwarts. Despite various HBO titles debuting new installments on an annual basis, even with the premise of each book jumping ahead to the next year, the Harry Potter TV show doesn’t sound like it will have that luxury.
While the relatively grounded nature of a show like The Pitt or Hacks means the turnaround time for each season is relatively short, HBO programs with higher production value take much longer to bring to life. HBO Max chief Casey Bloys recently confirmed with The Hollywood Reporter that, as previously demonstrated with other high-concept properties, Harry Potter also won’t debut new seasons annually:
“You have to balance it. For some of the bigger shows like Harry Potter or House of the Dragon, or The Last of Us, huge world-building shows, it would be nice to have those on an annual basis. But from a production point of view, it’s just not possible. It’s not that everybody involved is just taking their time and sitting around. These shows are complicated to do. In order to bring a show back on an annual basis, you do have to start from the beginning with people who know how to do it, people like [The Pitt executive producer] John Wells or Greg Berlanti, and it’s helpful if there are not dragons that need to be rendered, or zombies and things like that.”
With Season 1 of Harry Potter debuting in December, this likely means we shouldn’t anticipate Season 2 until 2028. Given the extended waits for other recent HBO programs, this might not be entirely surprising, though with most seasons of the original Game of Thrones regularly coming out each year, this recent release schedule is frustrating.
Even the original film series largely debuted new installments annually, with the occasional two-year break. As each book progressed, the Wizarding World grew more complex, and the young actors sometimes looked much more mature than their on-screen age.
Another significant factor in the development of the upcoming TV series is how audiences will respond to it. It’s been 15 years since the final movie, which might make it seem like this reboot is coming too soon. Additionally, breaking out each book into an entire season is quite the commitment, essentially confirming that the cast and crew will be locked in for easily more than a decade. The last time the Wizarding World put the cart before the horse, things didn’t go quite as planned.
Back in 2016, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a prequel movie that unfolded in America, was released and was a financial success. At the time, various members of the project claimed the concept would be a five-film trajectory. The next chapters in the saga, 2018’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and 2022’s Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, were financial and critical disappointments. As of this writing, there are no announced plans to ever deliver the next two movies that were previously reported.
In this sense, we won’t be surprised if, even though seven seasons are expected for the Harry Potter show, HBO pulls the plug if it isn’t well-received early on.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
