‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’: Could we ever get a film adaptation?
How has it already been fourteen years since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows concluded J.K. Rowling’s epic fantasy series? Just ten years ago, the film version of the series wrapped up, and ever since credits rolled, fans have been waiting for an update on Harry, Hermione, Ron, and everyone else at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry.
Back in 2016, Rowling and the team at Warner Bros. expanded the franchise with a prequel series that underwhelmed most fans. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them just didn’t have the same magic as the main Harry Potter series. The film’s sequel failed to impress audiences & critics alike.
However, the same year that Fantastic Beasts missed the mark, Rowling’s wizarding world made a surprise jump to a new medium: the stage. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a two-part play written by Jack Thorne. Its story, which picks up where the epilogue of Deathly Hallows left off, came straight from Rowling herself.
The play blew critics away, and it even managed to impress most die-hard Harry Potter fans. Many have been hoping for a screen adaptation of the play, and that possibility looks more & more likely. We’ve got everything a Potterhead needs to know right here.
Harry Potter and The Cursed Child
Here’s a quick, relatively spoiler-free rundown of the play. It takes place nineteen years after the end of the books. The opening of the show reveals that Harry now leads the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry of Magic. Ginny is the sports editor for The Daily Prophet, and their youngest son, Albus Severus Potter, will soon be attending Hogwarts.
The play begins during the epilogue scene from Deathly Hallows and follows Albus as he leaves for school. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child introduces a number of new characters who attend school with Harry’s children. Most notable are Scorpius Malfoy, the son of Harry’s old rival Draco, and a girl named Delphi with a mysterious origin. Albus & Scorpius hit it off as friends, and Delphi has to do with the play’s main conflict.
Harry & Albus end up on a quest to stop a new evil in the wizarding world. Doing so requires the use of a special Time Turner that gives them the ability to go into the past and change events that happened there. Luckily for fans, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child doesn’t use that plot device to just play the hits or rewrite the series’s history. New territory is definitely explored throughout the story.
Reception & film prospects
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child received rave reviews when it premiered. The show has had productions in West End, Broadway, and Melbourne. Later this year, it will open in Toronto at the Ed Mirvish Theatre. On top of that, when the script was published as a book, its sales went through the roof.
Despite the massive success of the show, J.K. Rowling & Warner Bros. have insisted there won’t be a film version of The Cursed Child. Rowling claimed the story was written specifically for the stage and couldn’t work any other way. It certainly has some quirks. The four-act play is split between two performances, usually held on back-to-back evenings.
However, Jason Kilar, the CEO of Warnermedia (which owns Warner Bros.) recently teased that the company has begun work on Harry Potter content for HBO Max. He gave no further details, but the internet exploded with rumors & speculation. Many speculated that the lengthy structure of The Cursed Child would work better as a TV show than a movie. No matter what’s coming to HBO Max, it’s sure to be magical.
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Do you think HBO should produce a TV show version of The Cursed Child? Will you be tuning in no matter what kind of Harry Potter content they put out? Tell us what you think in the comments!
