HBO Has No Choice But To Break Its Promise With Harry Potter

Published Sep 12, 2026, 11:15 AM EDT

Angel Shaw is a Lead Writer and Critic on ScreenRant's TV team, covering new-release and classic TV shows across all major streaming platforms. She has been a writer with ScreenRant since 2022 and specializes in Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and fantasy. 

Angel holds a bachelor's degree in language interpreting and is passionate about all things culture and communication—especially in how it relates to popular media throughout history (from Shakespeare to Friends to Game of Thrones).

HBO has made a big promise for its Harry Potter TV show. In fact, it might just be too big. The upcoming series has been controversial since the moment it was announced, as Warner Bros. ' Harry Potter movies remain a nostalgic staple of the entertainment industry. It's been 15 years since the film franchise came to a close, which doesn't seem quite long enough for a large-scale remake. Still, the primary hook here is that a Harry Potter TV show would have a lot more room to capture every element from J.K. Rowling's books—something that certainly wasn't true for the movies.

Book faithfulness is the promise that HBO has hinged its decision to remake Harry Potter on, and it's certainly an exciting prospect. As beautifully nostalgic the movies are, it can't be denied that they significantly simplified the books' story. There is so much more to this world than has ever made it to the screen, both in the way of plot and in thematic or philosophical intention. A book-faithful TV show could set things right for screen audiences, finally clueing the world into the sort of story only readers were privy to. Still, there's a problem here.

We've now had two trailers for the Harry Potter TV show, and something that these teasers have made clear is that not every single moment of this series will come straight from the books. HBO's promise for a "book faithful" adaptation implies that, moment by moment, this story will align with the perspectives and details Rowling wrote in her original series. However, the trailers alone feature completely new moments, and there are bound to be more in the complete season. In truth, it shouldn't be surprising.

Complete Book Faithfulness Would Doom The Harry Potter TV Show

As intriguing as a strictly book-faithful remake is, especially to canon purists, it was never a great idea for one simple reason—no one really asked for it. There have been years of analysis and complaints about all that the Harry Potter movies missed, but it wasn't really considered that WBD would remake the film franchise so soon after Deathly Hallows - Part 2 hit theaters. Rather, Harry Potter fans hoped and prayed for very specific spinoffs and prequels. The Marauders, Dumbledore, Voldemort, the Hogwarts Founders, and beyond would have been just the thing.

WBD decided instead to start from square one, but the only way the Harry Potter TV show actually works is if it also delivers on these other expanded stories. There has to be more to offer than what readers already had. Otherwise, the idea of simply bringing the books faithfully to the screen would have gotten old rather quickly.

This is especially true for those early seasons, since the Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets movies already did a fair job of faithfully adapting the books' content. It won't be until Harry Potter season 3 that anything on-screen would really be new, and by then, viewers will have lost interest. So, right from season 1 of the Harry Potter TV show, HBO must begin feeding viewers new answers and unexplored perspectives. The trouble now is just figuring out where this information will come from.

Harry Potter 'Canon' Has Become Rather Complicated

Adding content to the Harry Potter TV show that wasn't necessarily in the books doesn't mean that HBO needs to break canon. There is plenty of information about the plot and these characters that has come to light since the books came to a close, and the original story came with a great many heavily implied details that can be used confidently. Additionally, Rowling herself is an executive producer for the series. Unfortunately, this doesn't guarantee continuity as would generally be expected.

The Harry Potter franchise previously expanded into the Fantastic Beasts movies, which are considered canon and were all written or co-written by Rowling. Unfortunately, they were also stuffed full of continuity errors. Far too much was done for the sake of convenience or fan service, and it should be no surprise that this spinoff crashed and burned. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is another canon addition, but its continuity issues are even more outrageous.

HBO's Harry Potter will have to be far more careful, but with canon having been so thoroughly made a mess of, this won't be easy. Said and done, simply saying, "yes, this is canon," won't be enough. New additions need to both check this box and make absolutely perfect sense with the broader story. The big question now is whether HBO's Harry Potter can actually pull this off.

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  Dominic McLaughlin

  Harry Potter

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  Janet McTeer

  Minerva McGonagall

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  Albus Dumbledore

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  Nick Frost

  Hagrid

Harry Potter is HBO's adatation of the iconic Wizarding World book series tby J.K. Rowling. The first season, The Philosopher's Stone, follows the titular Harry Potter as he discovers his magical potential, enrolls at Hogwarts, and begins to uncover a sinister force.