So far a pretty great cast. Personally, I wished they had got Mark Rylance for Dumbledore, but Lithgow will be alright. He does have the twinkling blue eyes, but I felt Rylance hit some other points (Dumbledore having once been handsome, Dumbledore being sort of badass as far as fighting goes). The only random casting has been for Snape--an older, sallow, White man with long, greasy hair and yellow teeth with a young, handsome, short-haired Black guy... (Although I personally think Rowling had a part in that as a tongue-in-cheek joke that she sees some far left types out there these days as being as evil as the White supremacists and Nazis of WW2 that the Death Eaters had been based on.
And she ain't wrong, I've met several of that ilk who definitely are.) But Snape has never been one of my favorite characters, so I don't care if the casting is off there. Just glad the Weasleys haven't been racebent like seemingly all other red-haired characters have been. I would've rather they racebent Hermione if they were going to do one of the main three, since it wouldn't have been against her description.Looking forward to this so much, particularly GoF and OotP since those were the two the films erred the most with, but even the others... It will be nice to have the story given room to breathe. Aside from PS, CoS, and DH part 1, the films always had this weird, frenetic mile-a-minute pacing that I wasn't fond of. I would be surprised if the cast is as great as the one in the film series--mostly perfect aside from Gambon as Dumbledore, Narcissa, the twins, and Ginny--but otherwise I expect this to handily surpass the film version almost by default. Just glad Rowling has more involvement here so they don't screw it up.
