One ‘Harry Potter’ franchise director has weighed in on the HBO reboot

The director was responsible for the first two installments in the original franchise.

By Joe Allen Published January 20, 2025

Harry Potter holding a wand and looking disappointed. — Warner Bros.

From 2001 to 2011, the Harry Potter franchise was one of the most dominant ongoing franchises in Hollywood. The final installments seemed to cement the franchise as the definitive version of this story but in an era filled with reboots, it was only a matter of time before they came for Harry Potter. As casting news continues to leak out about the new Harry Potter series that HBO is developing, one of the original franchise’s directors has weighed in on the new version of the story.

“The fact that they have the leisure of [multiple] episodes for each book, I think that’s fantastic,” director Christopher Columbus told People. “You can get all the stuff in the series that we didn’t have an opportunity to do … all these great scenes that we just couldn’t put in the films.”

Recommended Videos

Columbus directed the first two installments of the film series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Those films are both quite long, but the plan for the HBO series is for each season to cover a single book. As a result, the show will have more space to fill in the details of the universe, and more closely adapt J.K. Rowling’s original novels.

As the show continues to cast for many of its more crucial roles, we still don’t know much about who will play the three children at the center of the series. Like Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, these kids will be signing up for a decade of work, and will have to saddle the expectations of thousands of fans.

Topics

Streaming

Contributor

Joe Allen is a freelance culture writer based in upstate New York. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The…

Culture

‘Spider-Man 4’ officially has a title and a release date in 2026

Tom Holland promises that he won't spoil this entry in the franchise

Tom Holland in Spider-Man No Way Home

It's already been four years since Spider-Man: No Way Home united Tom Holland's version of the character with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's, and for a time, there were questions about whether Holland was hanging up his saddle as the character.

We've known that Spider-Man 4 was coming for some time, though, and now, we know the movie will be called Spider-Man: Brave New World. The title dropped at Cinema Con along with a release date of July 31, 2026.

Culture

The Academy has apologized for failing to name the ‘No Other Land’ director in recent statement

Handam Billal was attacked by Israeli settlers and taken into custody earlier int he week.

A still From No Other Land

Following the news that Academy Award-winning director Hamdan Billal had been assaulted in the West Bank, the Academy released what many described as a generic statement acknowledging that their 11,000 members had a diversity of viewpoints and saying that they did not approve of "harming artists."
“On Wednesday, we sent a letter in response to reports of violence against Oscar winner Hamdan Ballal, co-director of No Other Land, connected to his artistic expression. We regret that we failed to directly acknowledge Mr. Ballal and the film by name,” the letter reads. “We sincerely apologize to Mr. Ballal and all artists who felt unsupported by our previous statement and want to make it clear that the Academy condemns violence of this kind anywhere in the world. We abhor the suppression of free speech under any circumstances.”

Academy President Janet Yang and CEO Bill Yang signed the letter, which came after almost 700 members of the Academy, including Mark Ruffalo and Ava DeVernay, signed a letter condemning the original statement.

Culture

One of the biggest video game franchises of all time is finally headed to theaters

The movie doesn't have a cast yet, but will hit theaters in exactly two years.

Link in 'Tears of the Kingdom.'

Video game adaptations are all the rage in Hollywood these days, and The Legend of Zelda is apparently the next franchise up. Variety is reporting that Sony Pictures will debut a live-action Legend of Zelda movie on March 26, 2027. The movie will be co-produced by Nintendo, and Wes Ball, who directed Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and the Maze Runner movies, remains attached to direct.

The film was first announced in November of 2023 by series creator Shigeru Miyamoto.
“This is Miyamoto. I have been working on the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda for many years now with Avi Arad-san, who has produced many mega-hit films,” Miyamoto wrote at the time. “I have asked Avi-san to produce this film with me, and we have now officially started the development of the film with Nintendo itself heavily involved in the production. It will take time until its completion, but I hope you look forward to seeing it.”
We don't know exactly what this movie will be about, although it's a good bet that part of the quest will involve Link's quest to save Zelda from some sort of peril.