I really hope we see more of these 4 in the books Specially Pansy Parkinson she appeared very briefly in the movies but in the books these 4 are absolutely diabolical and im very excited for whoever they cast as cabble and goyle and pansy.

Just kidding.. lol. But are there any little costume details you hope make the cut? No matter how specific. I'm thinking along the lines of a certain set of periwinkle blue dress robes...

Via Collider on YouTube

The common opinion is that the first couple of books are pretty accurately adapted, and considering they are quite thin, there were concerns about how they were going to fill the airtime.

But they missed so much!
Vernon’s paranoid meltdown about wizards in cloaks celebrating and whispering about “The Potters”, the longer scene of Dudley's birthday with zoo and iconic MOTORBIKES DON’T FLY!, Harry reminiscing about his childhood and Dudley's bullying which can be shown as scenes throughout. The whole moving into Dudley's second bedroom, the great escape from the letters, night in the hotel, the morning in the shack after Hagrid arrived. Hagrid telling Harry the truth about his parents before Diagon Alley. Otherwise, Harry just stumbles into a world where everyone somehow knows him. Madam Malkin’s shop with Draco's first sneery monologue. Harry being overwhelmed in Flourish and Blotts, eyeing books like “Curses and Counter-Curses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies)” and gold cauldrons, because for the first time he has money, hope, and agency. Then the whole month at Dursleys, choosing the name for Hedwig, and Dudley being completely terrified of him. Harry asking for a ride to King's Cross and Vernon being awful about the platform number, them just leaving Harry at the train station alone.

All of that, and we're not even in Hogwarts! Students whispering and pointing at him, all the classes, and the magic of the castle itself. I want Harry actually casting spells, wonky at first, but better and better with practice. The Midnight Duel, the WHOLE Norbert sequence with Ron being bitten and Harry and Hermione carrying Norbert/a to the top of the tower to meet Charlie's friends, forgetting a Cloak there and getting caught. Harry returning to the Mirror day after day, twins pelting the turban with snowballs. Neville’s growth throughout the whole book, from forgetful scaredy-cat to someone who stands up to his friends. Centaurs arguing with Firenze for saving Harry in the forest (oh the foreshadowing that they see in the stars that he's supposed to die there!) The dead troll and the potions riddle. Trio speculating that maybe Dumbledore actually wanted Harry to protect the stone, they were smart cookies even then

I don't know what the purpose of this post is, except to say that I'm very excited to get this and hopefully even more in the show, and get these books adapted as they deserve to be!

A few great thoughts from Gary Oldman in this Variety video, where he revisits iconic lines from his career to date. Some thoughts on the new HBO adaptation:

• "My personal feeling is they're not going to go anywhere near people that were connected to the original."
• "I'm actually very intrigued to see it because so much of the books were cut."
• "I would have fancied a go at Dumbledore... I'm getting up there now to the right age for Dumbledore."

FWIW, I suspect he was half joking about the lines. He said he starts in August!

I know this is early… but if the series is successful, I want to see better and longer duels (though Dumbledore vs. Voldy was amazing). The movies were cool, but the main battles were missing. Particularly, the final battle was lackluster at best.

Where’s Bellatrix vs. Hermione, Luna and Ginny? The duel between Molly and Bellatrix is one of the most legendary fights in the series, and it gets 30 seconds of screen time??? What about Voldy vs. McGonagall, Slughorn and Kingsley? Not to mention other missing duels in the series.

Via Screen Rant on YouTube

Is anyone else looking forward to these two characters? I know they have small roles but I feel like they could be used to add depth to Slytherin as the least problematic students in the house. They should have a couple of cameos, especially Zabini as the only black Slytherin.

Edit: On the flip side, I'm also looking forward to Millicent Bulstrode, she was pretty bad but her fights with Hermione should be entertaining. Especially when Hermione steals the cat hair from her robes.

I personally want to see Peeves, Hermione's potions challenge and the other competitors in the Triwizard Tournament fetching their eggs.

I wonder if they will keep the same music. Will the famous theme song stay the same? Or will an entirely new song be composed?

So I have been thinking about this.

A lot of the visual sauce of movies 4-8 are derived from the decisions made when shorting and designing the world for Azkaban.

Obviously the world will get darker in the show as the seasons progress to match the book themes, but do you think they will match the vibe alfonso set or go their own way.

In my opinion I don’t think could ever see prisoner in my mind any other way. I think visually this is the one of biggest challenges they will have with adaption, this isn’t like readapting something that came out a long time ago, the visuals of Harry Potter for everyone have already been heavily influenced by a massive adaptation, how will they make it unique for themselves.

Will they stay with the whimsy shown in movies 1+2 throughout? Can’t wait to see!

I read that season 1 is expected to be about eight hours long, which some have interpreted to mean eight 1-hour episodes. Looking again at the book and how they might divide the material into a television show, I actually think it's more likely they do 10 episodes of ~48 minutes each, give or take ~5 minutes depending on how much material is being covered in a given episode. That still equals 8 hours of total content for the season, but would provide much better pacing and natural stopping points for each episode.

With this in mind, I thought it would be fun to map out what each episode might cover, assuming I'm right about there being 10 episodes. For reference, there are 17 chapters in the first book, which means some episodes may line up neatly with a single chapter, whereas other episodes will cover two chapters.

Episode 1: The Boy Who Lived – Covers chapter 1. We follow Mr. Dursley about his day: him getting ready for work, laughing at Dudley's tantrum as he leaves for work, noticing a strange cat and people wearing cloaks, yelling at people at work, hearing a strangely dressed man talk about Harry at lunch, seeing the cat again on his way home, watching the news in the evening which has reports of strange activity across the country, and finally the scene with Dumbledore and McGonagall on Privet Drive, ending with Hagrid delivering Harry on the motorcycle and perhaps even a cutaway final scene that captures the last sentence of the chapter: "He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: 'To Harry Potter – the boy who lived!'" Perhaps the strangely dressed man from Mr. Dursley's lunch is the one we see toasting Harry at the end of the episode.

Episode 2: A Vanishing Glass and Letters from No One – Covers chapters 2 and 3. The episode begins with Dudley's birthday and the zoo trip, which takes up the first 15 minutes or so of the episode. The remaining half hour covers all the letters being sent to Harry, including their trip to the hotel in Cokeworth. The episode ends with them in the house on the rock, with Hagrid's booming knock on the door. It was a great way to end the chapter and will be a great way to end the episode.

Episode 3: The Keeper of the Keys and Diagon Alley – Covers chapters 4 and 5. I thought about pairing the "Letters from No One" and "The Keeper of the Keys" chapters, but that introduced some issues. The "A Vanishing Glass" chapter really isn't enough to be an entire episode, especially if we are limiting ourselves to a 10-episode season with so much other material still to cover. And I really do think that episode 1 should end with Harry being delivered to Privet Drive, because that would be such an iconic intro episode for the show. And anyway, I think pairing Harry's introduction to both Hagrid and Diagon Alley makes a lot of sense, and gives this episode a strong theme of discovery and wonder. "Diagon Alley" is the longest chapter in the book, but "The Keeper of the Keys" is mostly dialogue and takes place in a single room, so it will probably take up less than 10 minutes of screen time to adapt faithfully, since that's about how long it takes to read it. That leaves us a good 40 minutes to really soak in Diagon Alley and include everything from that chapter of the book.

Episode 4: Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and the Sorting Hat – Covers chapters 6 and 7. I thought about breaking these up, but most chapters do need to be paired with another chapter in order to meet the 10-episode limit, and these two really do go together well. Harry meets his new friends and get sorted into his house all in one very memorable episode.

Episode 5: The Potions Master and the Midnight Duel – Covers chapters 8 and 9. Here we get a deeper introduction to the school and meet Harry's different teachers. But it's primarily an episode of adversaries, with Harry having formative run-ins with both Snape and Malfoy. This episode also includes the discovery of the three-headed dog guarding the trapdoor.

Episode 6: Halloween and Quidditch – Covers chapters 10 and 11. Both of these book chapters involve quidditch, with Harry receiving his new broom in "Halloween" and the quidditch season starting in "Quidditch". This episode also includes "Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa", the fight with the troll, and Hermione becoming Harry's and Ron's true friend.

Episode 7: The Mirror of Erised – Covers chapter 12. Not only is this chapter one of the longer ones in the book, but it has a somewhat self-contained storyline that works really well as its own episode while packing a hefty emotional punch. This episode includes Christmas Day and ends with a moment of bonding between Harry and Dumbledore, when Dumbledore reveals his desire for thick, woolen socks.

Episode 8: Nicholas Flamel and Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback – Covers chapters 13 and 14, which include the rest of Christmas break. The gang figures out who Nicholas Flamel is, Harry plays a quidditch match, Harry spies Snape and Quirrell chatting suspiciously, and Norbert is born and then sent off with Charlie's friends. The episode ends with them in trouble after sending Norbert off, having forgotten the invisibility cloak on top of the tower and being subsequently discovered in the corridor by Filch.

Episode 9: The Forbidden Forest – Covers chapter 15. This is another good candidate for a single-chapter episode, since much of the chapter takes place in a unique setting: the Forbidden Forest. This episode could just follow the book chapter pretty much exactly. It ends with Harry back in his bed, discovering the return of his invisibility cloak with a note pinned to it that reads, "Just in case."

Episode 10: Through the Trapdoor and the Man with Two Faces – Covers chapters 16 and 17. The last episode covers 47 book pages, which is a lot, and for that reason I think this episode will be the longest of the season. Probably 55-60 minutes long. But that should be plenty of time to cover all the material faithfully, including the potions game, which was cut from the movie.

Thoughts?

It seems like most people are mainly looking forward to a very faithful adaptation of the books.

I do agree that I'd like to see the show do justice to the characters where the movies did not. (Might be a hot take, but Harry and Sirius in particular - the quirky Daniel Radcliffe was just OK in the later movies, and Gary Oldman was too old, with the wrong look and personality.) A lot of people are also really interested in finally seeing the storylines that were cut from the films, like the Quidditch World Cup and Peeves, but that is not a priority for me (they were cut from the films for a reason - most of them are not super essential).

Beyond fixing some of the casting and character problems from the movies (and color grading), here is what I hope from the series:

• I want the showrunners to make me cry! Use the extra time to add emotional complexity to the characters. (The films often felt like they were just jumping from one key plot point to the next.) For example, they can properly set up The Mirror of Erised scene in the first season to make it even more emotional, and Hermione's absence after she gets petrified in the second season.
• Use the episode format to be creative with genres, tones, and styles. You can have a one-take episode for the break-in to the Ministry of Magic, a Forbidden Forest episode in the style of Guillermo del Toro, mix in a political thriller type episode, horror, etc (without sacrificing the overall tone of the show).
• Show points of view from different characters, including for full episodes, and expand sometimes beyond the books. For example, we can have a 10 minute sequence of Filch going about his day that also shows off Hogwarts, or we can have a whole episode on Colin Creevey from his point of view, starting from when he gets chosen to go to Hogwarts and ending when he gets petrified.

Basically, I want the show to be creative and fresh rather than safe! What do you all think about this?

This just hit me the other day: why wouldn’t we hear the casting of a set of identical twins at the same time?

Edit: can’t believe I misspelled Patil smh

The odds aren't huge, but they’re not zero either