Harry Potter HBO series won’t have a new season every year “From a production point of view, it’s just not possible”

Bring in a different dude every season for Dumbledor at this point

I mean if this is the case why wouldn't they cast a bit younger? Love Lithgow but damn.

Lithgow has to be one of the most shortsighted casting choices

>Lithgow is already 80. John Lithgow is without a doubt going to be recast after season 2.

I said many times, cast Jeremy Strong as Harry. He's a method actor, he can do it. Kieran Culkin as Dobby. No CGI, just him playing as an elf, and this is never addressed or acknowledged

Their goal is 10 years 7 seasons which isn’t bad at all. Kids will be in their early 20s playing 16-18 which is actually young if we’re going off Hollywood long history of 30 year olds playing teenagers 

They have no excuse with them being made by the same studio. HBO should have the resources to be able to do it. Especially with how much money it makes as an IP

This is another case of a TV show being an objective hit and the people paying the bills refusing to shoot seasons back to back. With Harry Potter they could probably tell the story of the first two books within six hours of runtime spread across 8-10 episodes. So get them both done, knowing full well the show is going to be a hit, and then don't start filming S3 (and S4) until *after* S1 has been aired. 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7. When the second season of each block airs, the next block should be ready to go. Give S7 a little more time to cook considering the variety of locations in the first half of the book and the scale of the battle in the second half of the book. This is going to be one of the biggest shows in the world. They have no reason to take it slow season by season.

I think there are far more restrictive rules for child actors and how long they can work on set as well as have time set aside for school, etc. I suspect that slows way down how fast they can film. The movies had to abide by similar rules but they are likely filming way more for what I’m guess is a 10+ episode season for episodes that are likely an hour or more each vs a 2.5 hour movie.

GoT was able to film multiple units simultaneously because of how the storylines took place in different locations. This is child actors all in one place.

GoT had multiple story lines, characters, and locations they probably were filming simultaneously. Harry Potter follows the same people the whole time at same location so different productions for sure

I agree. I think tv shows are trying too hard to be like the movies. If you can’t bring back the show every year, even after cutting down the episode count to 8, don’t do a tv series maybe.

Especially on books that have already been made into movies lol. And they’re complete. Not sitting here waiting for additional books. You could film multiple seasons at once or at least sections of future seasons to reduce costs and keep aging down.

The original Harry Potter movies also came out 1-2 years after each other and they were very well made at the time. With the budget this show is probably getting, there is no excuse for this.

With multiple prodution crews on various continents as well.

GoT most recent spinoff is also doing a season per year. IMHO, it should be the normal thing to do when kids actors are involved. They grow up like weeds.

Game of Thrones, especially in its early seasons, was a lot easier to shoot in a short time frame than a show like Harry Potter would be. 1) GoT would have something like 4 storylines running during an episode, each storyline with its own setting (filming location) with its own cast of characters with very little if any crossover. This meant you could have one unit in Ireland shooting Caitlin Stark scenes, one unit in Morocco shooting Daenarys scenes, and one unit in Dubrovnik shooting Kings Landing scenes. HP basically uses the same sets for all the storylines on top of mixing around all of the characters. Can't shoot three scenes at once if the kid playing Harry Potter is in all three of them. 2) The lead actors in Harry Potter are children. There are certain laws regarding how long a child can work on set in any given day. GoT had some children, yes, but also a ton of adults that could fill in the rest of the day without time constraints. This is also why season 1 of Stranger Things had a Nancy storyline and a Joyce storyline.

Mostly just playing devils advocate but HP probably has more vfx work than all but the last few seasons of thrones.

“We subverted your expectations, again!” - HBO

Ive worked in the industry long enough to have seen the shift youre talking about, at ground level I can tell you the two biggest reasons (for me) why weve gone from 22 to 8..... Scripts arent locked before shooting begins - used to be back in the day youd have your script pretty muchwritten (or at least the first few eps) before pre production began in ernest. Last few years Ive worked on shows where the script isnt even locked while theyre filming it......which leads to changes, indecision, rewrites and reshoots. They use post production as a way to kick decisions down the road. Used to be CG/VFX was enough of a big deal that shots were planned way in advance and the production did everything they could to reduce costs/increase efficiency....now you have productions that shoot scenes without ANY idea what theyre adding, which leads to bad shots, bad performance but also much longer in post and editing to make them function. Even worse you have directors that have the mindset of 'anythings possible in post' so shoot whatever the hell they like then push those issues into post. None of this is helped by the fact that the same execs want to tighten the budgets and increase profits and rather than cut their own salary or reduce the above the line pay, they squeeze the below the line workers and (along with issues brought on by strikes and streamers) the experience and talent that would have avoided a lot of these issues has been driven out of the industry in favour of people who blindly say yes..... Film making TECHNIQUES may have changed massively in the last two decades but the process of story telling hasnt. TLDR - producers and execs have lost touch with actually how to make shows and now the industrys filled with middle management execs who want to have a voice but dont know what to say and are unable to make a decision. It is the epitomy of the saying 'a camel is simply a horse designed by a comittee'

Game of Thrones is a good example of this. It had 10 high-budget episodes release every April like clockwork for six years, then s7 was only seven episodes and released three months late, then s8 was only six episode and took two years.

I remember watching Stargate. 20 to 24 hour long episodes a season with amazing special effects for the time with often large casts and mostly fantastic writing. The industry has forgotten how to make TV.

Some of the old 22 ep shows would only spend 2 days shooting the ep. The pitt can bang them out because they reuse sets. A show can't fly around the world and shoot on location or have movie level special effects and still be crapped out at the pace of a police procedural.

Post production is completely irrelevant if you already know the exact thing you are making for the next 7 seasons. Even if post would take 2 years you can still work on multiple seasons in parallel filming 1 every year.

The amount of pre and post production is what does it.  The crazy thing is, we don't need that. The X Files did 20ish episode seasons for about a decade, and it was fantastic.  Studios are addicted to CGI effects because they lack the ability to tell compelling narrative stories.

The amount of CG production work is what it is, quite literally. House of the Dragon takes 2 years per season because they have to animate half the backgrounds and every time someone comes into contact with a dragon. There are only so many CG production houses and now that it's the most common special effect people have to join a priority ladder for each job they send over. HBO themselves understands this and is currently being blown away by how well The Pitt is doing as a week-to-week show filmed largely on a studio lot with minimal CG, one big set and 15-episode seasons. Turnaround of less than one year between seasons so far with a third already greenlit.

More like the last 5-6 years.

How many Harrys/Rons/Hermiones? Even at 1 season every 2 years that means they'll be around 20 for goblet of fire when they're supposed to be 15. If it's 3... They'll be 25.

Exactly. They should change the phrasing to something like Volume 2, 3, etc.

It didn't make sense to make another show about the same universe that had a successful movie series Maybe a show of them being adults would have sufficed. I mean the prequels to Potta with Dumbledore exploring a whole new world fared well.

Imagine if Stranger Things still had 2 more seasons to go? Thats gonna be this. 

Season 1 will be the entire run. Its going to be about 8 episodes. And season 2 will be years away. People will watch this once, then forget about it. The hype is already nonexistent.

Mark Rylance is holding out for the Gambon bucks

For real. You could literally cast someone who is half their age and they would do fine after makeup/costume is on

I’ll never understand casting an 81 year old actor for a part that realistically needs to last for at least 14 years.

They could have done a prequel series where we see Godric, Salazar, Rowena and Helga actually *create* Hogwarts away from muggles. Although it's supposed to be 1000 years ago or something close, they would be able to film on location anywhere rural like GoT did. Even a series following a character like Newt Scamander who visits multiple different schools all over the world so we can get a good look at Mahoutokoro, Castelobruxo, Ilvermorny, Uagadou, Durmstrang and any others I can't remember. There's a wealth of possible spin-off stories and lore to expand on but they just had to go and copy/paste a likely worse version of what we already have.

So why would they can a man who will be 90 and very likely not survive that long to play Dumbledore? Just keeping tradition?

Till you're ninety....five!

I guess the original Dumbledore also died