One reason why the books are enduringly successful IMO (my home station was thronged with diehard fans this morning as it often is in the holidays) is that children can imagine themselves in Hogwarts v easily: it is a purposefully slight school story, with magic:

Part of that is that frankly although there are some physical descriptions, there aren't many, and broadly speaking kids can and do imagine their friends as Hogwarts pupils, their teachers as looking like the teachers, etc. etc.

Of course this is a bit of a problem if you are planning to get eight hours out of a 223-page book, where across the whole series, every location exists for reasons of plot rather than 'the author wanted to construct a whole world'. It's not *meant* to sustain eight hours of prestige TV!

I know there's been rumours about casting for Voldemort, you know they are padding it out big time if they are already casting him given he has a few lines as a face in book 1 and then doesn't appear properly until book 4 (which even if they make it that far they'd get to around a decade from now)

Even before 'don't these guys know another little person who could act not called Warwick Davis Flitwick?' frankly the secret of the Harry Potter series success is that there is no reason why McGonagall could not be played by a little person (provided she's Scottish) or a minority (ditto).

Amusingly there are at most six characters whose physical appearance is crucial to their character and to the book's themes and *that* is the only role they have done something off-book and off-the Columbus movies:

Who are your six? Snape, Dudley, Dumbledore, Fleur, arguably Neville (though I think he could be scrawny as easily as fat and it would work). I do feel the Weasleys must have red hair.

The Weasleys must have red hair (I used to like the idea of making them British Indian in an adaptation, but I just think it makes the subtext of what Rowling is writing about snobbery and racism so crushingly obvious it is is wearying) but would do that with dye and wigs, I think.

Mine would be Snape, Dudley, Fleur, Dumbledore, James Potter*, plus wriggle room for anyone I've forgotten in the later books. I think Neville just has to look 'unfortunate', as it were. *I might be overreading but I think 'charming, very attractive, but a bit of a shit' is key to James

Very good point on James - fully agree. And yes, wigs fine for Weasleys.

He can be tubbier than his friends, he can be gangly, it doesn't matter, the actor just needs to be *awkward*. It's IMO the hardest part to cast because it requires the best actor in the first and it's a sign of how much Columbus knew what he was doing that Lewis is one of the best actors from it.

In the original films, Neville's 'honest but basically inept' character was conveyed by *checks notes* making him vaguely northern. And sweaters.

Yeah Neville is I'm pretty sure more muscular in the later films than in the books but he works in the first. (May also be another of the characters who are blonde in the books and dark haired in the films?)

My headcanon as a kid was always that Voldemort only looks like that post-resurrection and he was if anything very physically attractive at the point he killed James and Lily, and I genuinely think that holds up as an artistic choice

Agree - I mean, Tom Riddell is attractive. (Tom also looks a bit like Harry, it's IMO key to why both Harry and Ginny trust him when they shouldn't in Chamber of Secrets.)

And yet Neville turned out to be a wonderful actor too and wound up seeing on stage in some diverse roles!

Not 'and yet'! It's the most demanding role in the books and plot points that Columbus knew about at the time of casting and there is a reason that he puts a big gun there.

Gingerface?

I knew my Harry Potter threads would lead to me getting cancelled, I just didn't predict it would be like this.

I just want to know who I should be contacting to collect my shakedown money for not trying to make this a thing. (L'Oréal probably)

So the Weasleys are like the Harkonnens ?

The casting has a really clear before and after, in that before they decided to cast a hunky black man as Snape (a British guy who is decidedly not hunky who obsesses about his ancestry and lineage) they also cast Lithgow, and since then all the casting has been incredibly down the line and boring.

My guess would be that they thought that the backlash to the Snape casting was a sign that they had to be 'true to the book' not people going 'did you miss the parallel to racism that is literally so unsubtle *A CHILD* is meant to pick up on it and is important for this one bit of casting?'

But it means that there's now this funny dynamic of 'Dean Thomas, whose character beats are liking football, being good at art, and dating Ginny, must be black. Flitwick, must be a little person, in fact the same little person we hired last time. The weedy racist, however, can be a hunky black man'.

Not that it seems likely that they'll get to filming the fifth book anyway, but it'd be fascinating to see how much worse the "Harry's father horrifically bullied Snape with his rich friends but it's all good, he's a great guy and Snape sucks" beat from the books will land with that casting choice.

And part of the bullying is, uh, Harry's dad hoisting him into the air in a fit of jealousy over him being a romantic rival for a (persumably) white woman

A bit of a problem seeing as they are trying to pad out a thin-by-deliberate-design world that they've decided to get rid of the proper bit of depth in it.

Of course that goes back to the thing which is compelling and funny about this project, which it essentially runs on the Disco Stu logic of 'every extra minute of Harry Potter makes us more money!'

like surely the star wars sequel trilogy trope of "using your fantasy world to say something extremely basic about contemporary white radicalisation to score media points" was there for them

This is when I randomly find out that Dean is canonically Black - mentioned exactly once - in the American edition of the books thanks to a cut line being reinstated. Just after discussing the whole strange topic of divergent US and UK editions of YA and genre books on here yesterday.

"We thought the films were perfect, except Alan Rickman was just too damn pale"

There is only one little person in the whole world available for TV. Well two, but Peter Dinklage wouldn't do it.

They could always do what the Snow White remake did and use deepfakes to transplant an average-height actor's head onto an uncanny valley CGI body. I'm sure no-one would object to that

Though unfortunately if you asked them that question they'd probably just say 'you mean like Peter Dinklage?'

I'm wondering if part of the reason for bringing back Davis was difficulty in casting someone else. Not because of a lack of actors who fit the description but because of a lack of actors who fit the description and would take the role.

Using Warwick Davis again is all about saving money on talent for the sequel, ‘Harry Potter v Starwars - Return of the Ewoks’

Azkaban of Courage: An Ewok Adventure

"somehow, Voldemort returned"

Brilliant! 😆

:the revenge of Bavmorda

I’m losing my mind

Look, it's really important that Flitwick is little and that Dean Thomas is black. The guy who obsesses over his ancestry and racial purity, eh, who is to say?

ok this made me think and I'm ready to throw in my lot with the new adaptation on the condition that they make the Malfoys ehhh very Italian

nothing-a says in the books-a that-a the Malfoys cannot-a be Italian

Dobby is Dutch

fuck it we ball: Snape is Balkan now

He ruined his life by calling the girl he had a crush on a slur so this tracks.

neville is punjabi now

Malfoy being a Norman-aristocrat coded name is a nice bit of class subtlety in the books tbh

Would watch. By which I mean "stream illegally", I'm not paying for that nonsense.

I’d be asking those children (and their parents) why they weren’t at school! Isn’t today supposed to be the first day of term?

Depends on the borough, the type of school, the country - there are fewer kids today, but it was more diverse, I assume for this reason.

You're round the corner from me.

This is just such a flex that your local station is King's Cross, isn't it

Historians will argue for generations whether being surrounded by children visiting the set meant I kept being reminded of what a silly idea the series is, or if it was all just a way of bragging about my zone one lifestyle.

'S Bush was using it as an allegory for credulous fiscal planning in 21st century corporations' versus 'no he legit was just very interested in calling the reboot silly '

Amazing how one cultural product and a shit load of regeneration money has almost completely obliterated Kings Cross reputation from *not* that long ago. (shut up the turn of the millennium wasn't 25 years ago)

I once spent the night at King's Cross station during its "glory years", in sub-zero winter temperatures. I can't say it ranked among the top 10 most salubrious places I've stayed.

Just remembered that I immortalised my adventure in a thread...

'Harry Potter and the Ladies of the Night'

It's only really just occured to me that is another way it is obvious that she meant Euston. Fortunate for everyone really, not least it is a very useful coincidence that the tourists and the kids are funnelled away from the passengers by the fake 9 and 3/4 sign.

God can you imagine Euston with HP crowds? “…making this the third Harry Potter related stampede to claim a thousand lives…”

Even funnier really that if you want to visit harry Potter world you have to walk down to Euston anyway

I passed through King’s Cross on my holidays a few weeks ago and while I was there, waiting for my train, a nice man came over a politely asked if I knew where platform 9 and 3 quarters was. But I’m not a local so I’m afraid I didn’t know.

I apologised and moved on but I was briefly tempted to shake him by the shoulders and say “ you are a man in your early thirties, read a book for adults” but that would have been rude so I didn’t.

"just pick a wall and run into it really fast, if you end up on 7¾ they'll let you through the barriers don't worry"

Tbh they have cleverly stuck it in the corner away from the actual platforms now but annoyingly in front of the loos

It is a *really* clever bit of crowd management.

If nothing else, it would not work in the era of automatic ticket barriers

Even on a morning in the perineum between Christmas and New Year it was packed with foreign tourists tbh

I just have to get to Hatfiled House, and these crowds in front of the fucking magic shop will make me miss my train

The Enid Blyton of our age.

I've thought for ages Rowling took Enid Blyton's school stories, like Mallorie Towers, & added the magic stories, like the Magic Faraway Tree. It annoys me that a story written in Edinburgh & set in Scotland has only 2 Scottish characters.

I do enjoy the idea of this one professor trapped in an awful time loop where he has to live through the same 7 years rebooting over and over and nothing he does can stop it.

And now class, we're going to learn the groundhog charm...

Time loop kinda makes sense, considering he de-ages between movie 2 and movie 3...

Was a bit of an accident, if memory serves, he's not actually meant to be playing Flitwick the first time he looks like that, but everyone assumed otherwise, so they just rolled with it.

Oh, interesting! I thought it was just Alfonso Cuarón deciding to re-imagine the character 😅

As did everyone else, heh. Understandable, given all the stylist changes Cuarón introduced, but yeah, the Choirmaster was just meant to be a brief cameo for Davis as Flitwick had been cut from the PoA script.

Columbus gets the credit for establishing the world of the movies, but I reckon Cuarón had the bigger, longer term impact on their style. (Even - as with Flitwick - where it wasn't necessarily intentional!)

Oh, indeed. For better or for worse, pretty much every major stylistic change he made stuck around until the end. Personally I'm hoping they stick with the Columbus style this time...

I hope your inevitable long-read/hardback on this matter doesn't neglect the interesting goings-on with the Hogwarts Express. (Which will apparently be filmed entirely at the studio but with already-filmed digital scenery back-projection) bsky.app/profile/elio...