HBO Has Plans To Keep New Harry Potter Cast From Aging Problems Unlike Stranger Things

The Harry Potter TV series is one of the anticipated shows on HBO. The series is expected to have several seasons, but the people behind it already know how to avoid the aging issues that the cast could encounter due to delays in production, as is the case for Stranger Things.

HBO Max announced the Harry Potter series in 2023. The project will be a TV adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s beloved Harry Potter, which became a huge success in cinemas after it sprawled eight blockbuster movies. However, the TV show will star new and younger actors with ages between 9 and 11. The TV series will reportedly be more faithful to the events from the books compared to what fans saw on the big screens. Since it will reportedly have seven seasons—one season for each book—there are concerns that the cast members will age while still filming the project, but the production team is ready for it.

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HBO chairman and CEO Casey Bloys admitted that they considered the kids’ growth and potential physical transformation as the Harry Potter TV series could take years and it will continue as they approach adolescence. “It is something we’re thinking about,” Bloys said, per TV Line. “One of the ideas we talked about was shooting the first season and the second season very close to each other time-wise, because 11 to 13 is a big jump in kids’ lives. You can get away with 13 to 15, something like that. So we’re going to have to think about scheduling and shooting so that they don’t grow too much between seasons. It is a consideration.”

HBO should indeed plan the filming schedule relative to the cast’s age, as Netflix’s Stranger Things has become the butt of a joke for the same reason. The age disparity between the young cast and the characters they were playing was evident on screen because it took years for Netflix to release each season, but in the storyline, the events were only weeks apart, so the cast members had to play characters who were years younger than them. The show’s trailer released in July also featured the cast members enjoying a bike ride when they were much younger. Millie Bobby Brown said she was only 10 when they started filming Stranger Things, but she was already 20 at the time of the recording, which reportedly “feels very weird.” Caleb McLaughlin, who plays Lucas on the hit horror series, even poked fun at the long-delayed Stranger Things Season 5. He shared a photo of him with his co-stars Sadie Sink (May Mayfield) and Maya Hawkeye (Robin Buckley) on X, formerly Twitter, and edited it to make them significantly older, suggesting the long wait.

HBO should really plan on how to handle the cast members’ aging because the changes in their physical appearance are obvious when they approach adolescence, and when the age disparity is undeniable, it reduces the effectiveness of the storyline. It’s important for actors to portray characters of the same age as them because it’s distracting when they are too old or too young for the role they portray. Also, in the case of Stranger Things and Harry Potter, the cast members’ age is important for the consistency of the storytelling that spans years. Casting young actors should mirror the character’s development, so the production should plan ahead on how they should deal with age disparity, especially for series that could take years with the main cast getting older over the years.

Harry Potter is expected to premiere on HBO Max in 2026.

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Source: TVLine