It’s rumor time: There could be a Harry Potter series coming to HBO Max [UPDATE]

UPDATE, 1/25/2021 @ 12:29 PM: Accio, clarification! While Variety continues to stand by information received from “multiple sources” regarding the early development of an HBO Max Harry Potter series at the time of this update, the streamer and Warner Bros. have issued a statement denying the existence of any such project. “There are no Harry Potter series in development at the studio or on the streaming platform,” the two entities said in a joint statement to Variety. Maybe the current stage of development precedes an official greenlight from the wizards up top. Maybe these “sources” are actually just nargles. Who knows? In any case, we’ve update the headline to reflect this new (non?) development. Below is our original post from 11:07 A.M.

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Lending further credence to the theory that 2021 is but a trench coat with three 2020s comically stacked on top of one another inside, HBO Max has reportedly begun its inevitable work of developing a series based on Harry Potter. Per Variety, the network has neither confirmed nor officially announced plans for the series—though we all knew this was coming, yes? It is as if 2021 peeked its head out of a hole in the ground, saw its shadow and declared six more years (at least) of J.K. Rowling discourse.

The particulars of the new Harry Potter series are currently unknown—one of those “the headline is the news and the only news” situations, meaning we have no idea when the series might be set (prequel? sequel? side-quel?) or which characters it might follow. Variety’s report notes that the project is in “very early” development, as if there’s some chance in hell that HBO Max won’t absolutely abuse this license to print cash. The best we can do at the moment is speculate about a bunch of nothing and maybe hope this series has as little to do with its harmful creator as possible.