HBO’s "Harry Potter" Reboot Made A Huge Mistake

A full seven-season HBO series. More time to explore the depth of the books. A chance to recapture the wonder, introduce a new generation of actors, and revive the sense of awe that made the franchise beloved in the first place.

It's a bold and ambitious project, and it needed to be flawless, because, say what you will about the original films, the casting was nearly perfect. What made the original Harry Potter films so enduring? Yes, the world-building. Yes, the score. But mostly, the casting.

Daniel Radcliffe. Rupert Grint. Emma Watson. Alan Rickman. Maggie Smith. Gary Oldman. Helena Bonham Carter. They were literary incarnations. Watching them on screen felt like the books had come to life.

Instead, the reboot has already lost its magic. Not because of budget or the source material, but because it’s aiming to impress the wrong audience—the one that wants everything "reimagined."

The One Casting That Should’ve Been Obvious

Let’s start here: Adam Driver should’ve been Severus Snape. Obviously.

It isn't just a clever idea. It's the kind of casting that immediately clicks. Driver already lives in the same emotional register as Snape. Rage and restraint, pain masked as pride, love twisted into bitterness. His voice alone carries that bruised authority. And the physicality? Gaunt, intense, unreadable. He could practically be Alan Rickman’s son.

It was an intuitive choice. The kind of casting that builds buzz and pays tribute to the source material. Instead, they cast Paapa Essiedu. A talented British actor, yes, but one who looks and feels worlds away from Snape. It’s not that he can’t act the part. It’s that the choice doesn’t serve this specific character and story.

And here’s where things get messier.

Snape’s character is defined, in part, by his tortured dynamic with James Potter, the handsome, effortlessly confident Gryffindor who bullied him mercilessly as a student. In the original story, the pain between them is deeply personal but not racialized. Now, casting a black Snape opposite what is presumably a white James Potter changes that dynamic entirely, even if unintentionally. It adds a subtext that was never in the books. In other words, we’re adding an unnecessarily divisive race narrative to a conflict that already had plenty of weight. And why, exactly?

This is the problem with the new Hollywood habit of swapping white characters with black actors while pretending nothing else changes. It happened with The Little Mermaid, where the story’s underwater fairy-tale logic was expected to override audience expectations about Ariel’s appearance. It happened with Percy Jackson, where Annabeth Chase—canonically a blonde, blue-eyed character—was recast, and fans were told to “stop being racist” for noticing.

Captain America: Brave New World introduced Anthony Mackie as the new Captain America, shifting away from the character's traditional portrayal. Despite the franchise's previous successes, this film experienced a substantial 68% drop in its second weekend, one of the steepest in Marvel's history. Similarly, the long-standing British series Doctor Who faced poor reception when it cast a black man as Isaac Newton. 

We already have a wealth of magical cultures and characters in the Harry Potter universe, where diverse casting makes perfect sense. There are entire corners of that world still unexplored with cultures, spells, and stories that could introduce fresh characters of every background.

Across the board, this was a golden opportunity to reassemble a cast that honored the spirit of the originals while feeling thrillingly new. But instead, HBO seems determined to make a "statement" no one is asking for.

Hollywood Doesn’t Trust the Audience

People don’t fall in love with characters at random. They fall in love with how they’re written, how they’re drawn, how they come to life on the page. They imagine their faces. Their voices. Their mannerisms. And when it’s finally time to see them onscreen, they want that imaginative bond fulfilled.

So when a white character is replaced with a different race, or when gender, appearance, and personality are changed to meet the demands of modern politics rather than the internal logic of the story, audiences check out. Not because they’re bigoted. Because they’re invested.

That’s why nobody wants to see a white Tiana or a gender-flipped Mulan. It’s about preserving the soul of a character, not just their name. Casting should deepen the story, not distract from it.

But the people behind this Harry Potter reboot don’t seem to believe that. They don’t trust the material. They don’t trust the fans. And worst of all, they don’t trust the idea that a good story doesn’t need to be "reimagined." It needs to be respected.

This wasn’t an opportunity to rewrite the story. It was an opportunity to reignite it. To remind a generation of readers why they loved this world to begin with. To show the next generation that it still matters.

We didn’t need this reboot to break new ground. We needed it to honor the ground J.K. Rowling had already laid. We needed casting that felt mythic, intuitive, unforgettable. We needed actors who felt like magic.

And Adam Driver as Snape would’ve been magic.