Harry Potter (2026 on HBO)

[Disney's Divinity]

I figured this deserved its own thread since it'll be airing for years.

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.

[Disney's Divinity]

I wonder how much the Netflix purchase could impact things. Hopefully not much, since the vast majority of characters are already cast by the time the deal goes through in late 2026.

Only thing I'm worried about is the potential lack of blu-ray release now, since Netflix likes to lock things to streaming only. The same way the Sailor Moon Crystal films never have been released.

[Disney's Divinity]

The music is being done by Hans Zimmer (of TLK fame among many other things) along with Bleeding Fingers. So surprisingly the soundtrack might be even better than the films.

[Disney's Divinity]

The trailer was fine. Only thing that took me aback was Hagrid's voice sounding all...normal. Hope they work on that anyway. Otherwise, fine.

There's talk about Tilda Swinton possibly playing Voldemort. She would be phenomenal of course (she is in everything), and it would be funny considering she already played Jadis in Narnia. That would just leave her to play Sauron in some future LOTR. I know there had been talk about Cillian Murphy, but he denied it, which is a shame since he'd have been perfect. I'd only be fine with Swinton since she's played androgynous characters before; I assume whatever actor for Tom Riddle would be a man though. Of course that would unintentionally play into the hands of people who hate her who like to claim she's antitrans for political expediency, but tbh, I wouldn't care at this point if they'd continue bending all the villains since they've already done it with Snape. With those characters being originally a take on the Nazis / White supremacists of the WW2 era and all their anti-Semitism--and they're far right ideology--I guess it wouldn't be wrong to have a new version with the villains being a far left equivalent between the transtifa terrorist groups out there in the vein of Tyler Robinson and the individuals who've targeted Rowling, Dave Chappelle, and others with death threats, Black supremacist types who claim to be for general diversity only as a disguise for their own hatred, etc. since anti-Semitism is spilling out of the far left in the modern day. And, tbh, it's taken a little time, but I see the far left as being as evil as the far right, the only difference between them is skin color or other identity labels usually--their aims and actions are mostly the same, just in reverse of each other. There's plenty of fodder there to fill the villains' roster with, and shows how hatred ends up reverberating in many different forms.