With the disclaimer of “the economics of streaming are opaque”, the commercial trajectory of “first one makes the best part of $600mn, next two make half the money” of the Shades films feels about right to me for this - with the added difficulty of “these are much more expensive to make”.
Fantastic Beasts had a similar trajectory iirc
Though admittedly that also had constant personnel problems on the actor side...
you don't know the show won't have those, anything could happen
Just from the perspective of “the child actors I knew from when I was one in theatre”….I think given the number of speaking roles, a 100 per cent certainty.
Funniest roles for the Harry Potter show to need to recast, ranked
Also with the element of regular author-caused headaches and clear diminishing returns leading to later installments being churned out with noticeably lower effort out of a sense of obligation.
And yeah, agree also that it just screams “production nightmare”. The last time had one of the greatest directors of children doing the initial films, he put huge thought into casting, protecting them. They still lost one castmember to “going off the rails” and they also did them quicker.
Even assuming HBO manage to release them in a timely fashion, something they have yet to do with any of their other streaming properties, *on schedule* still runs into “the point where several key actors were not talking to one another”, and well past “shaping Watson’s schedule around her uni”.
The credit here actually lies with @andycraig.bsky.social
People demand to know!
The arc of a Bluesky thread is long but it bends towards @stephenkb.bsky.social talking about HBO’s Harry Potter series
which cast member went off the rails and how?
Well one of Malfoy’s henchmen got done for looting in the 2011 riots iirc, can never remember which one
The guy who played Crabbe was jailed for taking part in the 2011 riots iirc, though not sure if Stephen had someone else more prominent in mind?
He'd actually got fired for his previous arrest on drug charges IIRC
Yeah, he vanishes between films because of the drug charges.
Ironically before the only one where he is actually particularly distinct from Goyle
Yeah. I stopped watching after Phoenix, because I didn’t care for the last books and also, I was no longer a child, so this is not a well evidenced judgement, but the one decision the films take that I go “really?” is “creating a new henchman and not just recasting Crabbe”.
Tbf it's still a pretty minor character so there's not much point in recasting? It's not like idk Bonnie Wood (Ginny) got caught looting an H&M
Wright! (An old flame went to the same school as her.)
Does make you wonder what's the most prominent character they could replace without recasting tbh - I mean they did recast Lavender Brown and that was fine .. an ancilliary but notable character like Seamus Finnigan or Filch maybe? Nobody would be outraged that the janitor is now 'Frey'
Is the obvious answer not to just do a The Crown, and recast every season lol
It's hard to find a child actors good enough to hang a show on. It would be impossible to do it seven times in a row.
It gets incrementally easier as they get older (one thing no-one picks up on about Sadie Sink is that there is absolutely no reason to add Max, other than as a “oh, one of the kids is not v good, need another one” IMV.)
You can always do a big structural break too - 'oh now it's season five, the stakes are bigger it's no longer a young kids show, time foe a new cast that can swear credibly etc
(Would also work as a 'fuck, this show is sinking, we need a Soft Reboot)
Let’s have a look at what Stephen’s talking about in this thread about Donald Trump body doubles. One thing’s for sure: it won’t be HBO’s Harry P— oh.
The kid who was originally cast to just be kidnapped in season one, who they then clearly struggled with after?
Yep!
It doesn’t get “go out and do this seven times” easier, and even having a conscious plan to do a…shall we say “rolling review” of the cast and find Sadie Sinks accordingly would make the set incredibly poisonous and unpleasant.
But there are things that they could do to make it easier, and for instance, it’s crackers that they have announced the Weasleys in a way which outright states that Plan A is to keep them all, because you just don’t need to, and indeed should plan *not* to.
There is a reason that the only Weasley from the films to have a successful career is the one who only showed up in the final year.
Imagine the stress free and supportive atmosphere you would get when say, Harry and Hermione think that Rob isn't doing well enough and WB are about the refresh the entire cast.
Right. I loved youth theatre and drama camp, but what can make it great is also what can make it toxic and horrible, which is that your ability to do well lives and dies together.
there is also a secondary reason to add Max, and it's the reason why they brought in Priah Ferguson as Erica in season 3, namely that after a certain point the dynamics of "3 normal boys and the weird alien girl" started to feel unbalanced.
(yes, you had Nancy as well, but that's a slightly different character aimed at a slightly different audience)
Stephen bush post Carcinisation
Yeah, and that has its parallels in a different way with 50 Shades too - for the first film they brought in a director prominently experienced in filming sex scenes, both aesthetically and in terms of managing actors. 2 & 3 otoh, just some dude who clearly doesn't want to see Jamie Dornan's dick.
