HBO is filming Harry Potter again, one book per season, over a decade
Forty thousand young actors auditioned before HBO chose three unknowns to play Harry, Ron and Hermione. The new series treats each of J. K. Rowling's novels as a full season, so the story that took eight films to tell will stretch across roughly ten years of television.
Word that a Harry Potter series was in development had surfaced by January 2021, and the plan from the start was a long one: a fresh adaptation of the books whose production would run for about a decade. HBO is making it with Warner Bros. Television, Brontë Film & TV and Heyday Films. Francesca Gardiner serves as showrunner, and Mark Mylod directs and shares the creative lead.
The search for the young leads opened with a casting call in September 2024. By May 2025 the producers had settled on their trio: Dominic McLaughlin plays Harry, Ron goes to Alastair Stout, and Arabella Stanton becomes Hermione. Stanton picked up a second job in the same world, voicing a younger Hermione for audiobook versions of the first three novels. Cameras started rolling in July 2025 at Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire.
The adult cast mixes stage and screen veterans. John Lithgow takes on Dumbledore, Janet McTeer plays McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu is Snape and Nick Frost is Hagrid. One face carries over from the films: Warwick Davis returns as Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher who heads Ravenclaw. Paul Whitehouse, cast as the caretaker Argus Filch, has an odd earlier link to the franchise. He had played Sir Cadogan in the 2004 film of Prisoner of Azkaban, but his scenes were cut before release.
Season one, called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, runs to eight episodes and follows the orphaned eleven-year-old from his miserable life with the Dursleys into Hogwarts, where friendship with Ron and Hermione is tested by signs of Voldemort's return. It is set to debut on HBO in the United States and on HBO Max worldwide on 25 December 2026. HBO did not wait for reviews: in May 2026 it ordered a second season built on Chamber of Secrets.
Source: Harry Potter (TV series)
