Rumor: Harry Potter Reboot is Coming to Ruin Your Childhood Memories
In our age of sequels and reboots, nothing from one's childhood seems safe. And now there is a rumor that a full reboot is planned for the lucrative Harry Potter movie franchise, having first surfaced on YouTube.
Allegedly, there are plans to re-adapt all seven main Harry Potter novels anew, with full recast. If true, the first movie of the reboot might hit the screens within 3-5 years for now.
Now, a rumor is a rumor. And even the rumor notes that currently the reboot is not yet a "done deal". If bosses from Warner Bros. Discovery listen to their potential audiences, it might never become a done deal, as the fandom's reaction to the rumors is strongly negative and largely amounts to "We don't need a reboot of Harry Potter."
Or, as one Reddit user bluntly put it, "this is just a cashgrab, motivated by the fact that the current Wizarding World movies do not make enough money."
The best thing anyone had to say about rebooting Harry Potter is that a TV series with a season per book, covering all the details which did not make it into the movies for lack of screentime, could work.
Approximately no one is enthusiastic about more Harry Potter movies at the moment.
Yes, any sufficiently popular work of literature is bound to eventually get multiple adaptations. But Part 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hit the screen less than 12 years ago. Too little time has passed, and that adaptation is still fresh in everyone's memory. For many fans, the performances of the actors who worked on it became the defining takes on their respective characters.
At this point, instead of trying to capture new audiences, any reboot would inevitably be competing against the first adaptation, and it probably would come up short.
If it sticks to the books, it would be seen as an attempt to sell us a carbon copy. If it tries to take liberties with the source material, it would be seen as being different for the sake of being different.
It is hard to imagine a director and cast that would be able to make a reboot work in spite of such handicaps.
But then again, all of this might just be an empty rumor. While it provoked some lively discussion, in the absence of any reliable source, "this isn't news, this is clickbait" could well be the actual most popular reaction.