Credit: Warner Bros.HBO’s Harry Potter series is officially hitting the reset button on the wizarding world, wiping the continuity slate clean after the hugely successful eight-film series for a new and allegedly more “faithful adaptation” of the seven books by J.K. Rowling.
The upcoming series, which will span seven seasons over 10 years, stars John Lithgow (Albus Dumbledore), Nick Frost (Rubeus Hagrid), Paapa Essiedu (Severus Snape), Janet McTeer (Minerva McGonagall), Paul Whitehouse (Argus Filch), Katherine Parkinson (Molly Weasley), Alastair Stout (Ron Weasley), Arabella Stanton (Hermione Granger), and Dominic McLaughlin (Harry Potter). The extensive cast includes dozens more confirmed actors.
The series is written and executive-produced by showrunner Francesca Gardiner (HBO’s Succession, His Dark Materials, Killing Eve).
J.K. Rowling, Neil Blair, and Ruth Kenley-Letts of Brontë Film and TV, and David Heyman of Heyday Films are also onboard as executive producers.
Mark Mylod (Succession, Game of Thrones, The Last of Us) will executive-produce and direct multiple episodes. Season 1 is now being filmed and is expected to premiere in 2027.
Related: ‘Harry Potter’ TV Series’ Lord Voldemort Actor May Have Just Been Revealed
HBO’s Harry Potter Expected to Share Its Timeline
While the series essentially replaces the Harry Potter films (although Warner Bros. has stated that they will remain at the core of the franchise), a report from 2024 heavily implying that the HBO reboot will share its continuity with the game Hogwarts Legacy.
The third-person open-world video game made waves online ahead of its release in 2023, but for all the wrong reasons. While anticipation for a sandbox experience set in the wizarding world was unsurprisingly high, Hogwarts Legacy became the target of boycotts from trans activists due to its affiliation with author J.K. Rowling.
The game was a commercial hit but remains divisive among fans for some of its underdeveloped features, including the poor quality of its NPCs (non-playable characters). Still, from a narrative perspective, it remains a popular addition to the Harry Potter franchise, despite it still being unclear which wizarding world timeline it belongs to.
Related: HBO’s Latest ‘Harry Potter’ Update Suggests TV Series Might Be Set in the Multiverse
Hogwarts Legacy is a prequel that takes place in the late 1800s, around a century before the Boy Who Lived ever stepped foot inside Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
While both the game and the Harry Potter reboot are bound to share similarities given the fact they’re set in the same fictional school and wider wizarding world, fans compared leaked set photos from the HBO production shared on Reddit with areas from Hogwarts Legacy.
An Official Word From Warner Bros.
More notably, back in November 2024, Variety reported that the game’s sequel, Hogwarts Legacy 2, which is in development, will share elements of its plot with the HBO series.
David Haddad, president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, said that the new game’s team had been coordinating some of the big-picture storytelling elements with the storylines that are expected to play out in the reboot. What these are remains unclear.
Whether or not this shared continuity will be made clear in the HBO series also remains to be seen (beyond structural similarities, we may get reference to characters and events from Hogwarts Legacy). Another question is whether the series will also take on the Fantastic Beasts films. While they share a handful actors with the main films, there’s nothing stopping the new Harry Potter from branching out its own timeline through pre-existing content.
Would you like the Harry Potter reboot and Hogwarts Legacy to share the same timeline? Share your thoughts with us in the comments down below!