According to press reports, Warner Bros. is hoping to create a film adaptation of Jack Thorne’s 2016 play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The stage piece, which debuted on London’s West End before opening on Broadway, was inspired by J. K. Rowling’s Potterverse, since it features many familiar characters at Hogwarts. However, Potter purists do not consider it a true successor to Rowling’s original narrative because of the liberties it takes with plot and characters.
Set in a timeframe nineteen years after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the Thorne play narrates the story of a grown-up Harry and his son, Albus Severus Potter, who is following in dad’s footsteps as a student at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Puck News reports that the Cursed Child adaptation is part of a new strategy by Warner Bros. president/CEO David Zaslav in an effort to resuscitate its Harry Potter film franchise in the wake of the recent Fantastic Beasts debacle, which saw The Secrets of Dumbledore take a huge hit at the box office.
And director Chris Columbus has reportedly indicated his willingness to direct the new Cursed Child film despite the perceived flaws in the proposed sequel. Puck, however, warns that “Despite the play working very well as an immersive on-stage experience, making Cursed Child a bona fide part of the Wizarding World by translating it to the screen is unlikely to go over well with fans of the originals and could run into the same hurdles as Fantastic Beasts.”
Casting for the new film also poses some conundrums, as described by Amanda Lamadrid, who writes in ScreenRant: “It was a meaningful shift for many when Cursed Child cast a Black actor as Hermione, offering an organic opportunity for diversity on the stage and in the Harry Potter universe. Bringing Emma Watson back as Hermione would erase that progress, though not bringing Watson back in one of her most beloved roles would also likely incite controversy.
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Plus, it’s being reported that many of the original actors in the Harry Potter franchise would prefer to pass up the opportunity to be involved in the new Cursed Child film in the interest of diversifying their own careers.
Zaslav has been quoted as saying Warner Bros. wants to make more films with J. K. Rowling. “We’re going to focus on franchises,” he said. “We haven’t had a Superman movie in 13 years.
We haven’t done a Harry Potter in 15 years. The DC movies and the Harry Potter movies provided a lot of the profits for Warner Bros.
… over the past 25 years.”
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