WarnerMedia reportedly planning Harry Potter TV series for HBO Max

A live-action Harry Potter TV series is reportedly in the works at HBO Max, trade reports said.

The project is described as in “extremely early stages,” with the streamer merely having conversations with writers looking into various ideas. The studio and HBO Max are both outright denying having a project officially in development as of yet.

The situation sounds a bit similar, if perhaps more nascent, with what’s going on with Game of Thrones. EW reported last week that HBO and HBO Max are meeting with writers and exploring adding multiple new titles based on author George R.R. Martin’s works to the service in an effort to greenlight more than one new title in the world of Westeros, yet that’s likewise still in early days.

Bringing Harry Potter to the small screen for the first time would be a pretty dramatic and perhaps inevitable move. The streaming service wars combined with the success and coming expansion of Disney+’s Star Wars series The Mandalorian is provoking a likeminded scramble to mine proven cinematic properties for television. The longtime budgetary and creative distinctions between “TV-sized” content and “big-screen-sized” content has been nearly eliminated as television budgets have increased and special effects have improved.

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