I was not going to write about Harry Potter again. I had an entire post about Star Wars v. Star Trek all set up in my head. This will be the fourth post in a row, and I know that. It’s just that it’s kind of hard to ignore what HBO just announced. Apparently, HP will be rebooted as a seven-season television show, with one season for each year at the school. That’s right, not stories in the Harry Potter universe, but a reboot of the original book series as a television show. I can’t think of a worse idea that will make people billions of dollars.

This is not about J.K. Rowling. I know she’s a controversial figure these days, and she is involved in this, but it’s really more that this is a bad idea. Just a really, really bad idea. This shows that HBO and Hollywood in general has failed to learn any lessons from how they’ve screwed up other major franchises. What do I mean you ask? Let’s go over it.

Lesson One: Don’t Reboot the Story when Nothing was Wrong with the Original and it wasn’t that Long Ago. Disney should have learned this one by now after redoing the entire Disney Renaissance in live action. Or in the case of the Lion King, “live action.” No one asked for a new Aladdin. No one asked for a new Beauty and the Best. No one asked for a new Little Mermaid. Disney gave them to us anyway, and though they made money, I can’t think of anyone who said “Wow, that was what was missing from my life.” Cinderella and Jungle Book kind of worked, because the originals were released in the middle part of the twentieth century, though it should be noted that neither of those reboots were as iconic as the original.

The original Harry Potter series was not that long ago. The first film in that series appeared in 2001. The last film in that series appeared in 2011. That was twelve years ago. I know. I saw both films in theaters. I can’t say that for the Little Mermaid. The films did extremely well. Pretty much everyone I know owns all the films. So, even if this show is well written, it will live in the shadow of the original. The temptation to constantly compare the show to the movies will be irresistable.

Lesson Two: Certain Characters are Impossible to Recast. After making forgettable reboots of its own movies, Disney decided to make a forgettable Star Wars movie when it made Solo, recasting Alden Ehrenreich the lead. The problem was evident from the beginning: Harrison Ford does not play Han Solo. Harrison Ford is Han Solo. Certain characters like superheroes can be recast over and over again. We get a new Batman and Spiderman every five years it seems. But those characters were built up by comic books for years before they were introduced in film, so the character and the actor playing the character had independent identities. As I said, the first Harry Potter Movie was released in 2001, a mere three years after the first book came out, and lasted for ten years, and throughout that time Daniel Radcliff, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson were the main characters. Not exactly Han Solo-Harrison Ford level identification, but close. Whoever they cast as the golden trio, those child actors are being set up to fail.

Lesson Three: Don’t Stretch Out the Story by Adding a Bunch of Extra Stuff. When the Lord of the Rings came out, a bunch of superfans got mad that they cut out Tom Bombadil. Then, they decided to stretch the Hobbit, which was the shortest of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, out to three movies, and we all learned that as bad as cutting stuff out can be, adding stuff that wasn’t there in the first place is worse. You need more material to fill up a season of television than a movie, and what we’re being told is that there will be additional storylines which are going to be added in order to fill up space.

I don’t oppose additional stories within the Wizarding World. It’s like additional Star Wars movies. It’s kind of hard to oppose something that is inevitable. Going back and changing the original stories, however, never ends well. This is less like releasing additional Star Wars movies and more like changing the first Star Wars movie to have Greedo shoot first.

And yet, inevitably, it will make money. Once again, whatever you think of J.K. Rowling, the wizarding world makes money wherever it is. Some people were down on the latest Fantastic Beast movie. It still made over $400 million. And that’s with COVID keeping people away from theaters, one group of people who hate J. K. Rowling, another group of people who hate Johnny Depp, and the fact that this is now the eleventh Harry Potter movie. It still makes money, and that’s why we keep getting more of it.

The real problem here is that we need to be pushed to embrace new stories. Remember when America produced new stories? Yeah, I know Hollywood has been doing reboots forever, including like 25 versions of the Wizard of Oz in the 1920s and 1930s, but they knew to stop after they finally got it right. There’s a lot of 80s nostalgia going on right now, but I think that what was great about that era is the fact that the stuff Hollywood keeps regurgitating at us was new. Yeah, remember back when Ghostbusters was a smash hit that came out of nowhere and not a franchise that just pumps out one movie after another in hopes of getting a few guaranteed hundred million? Our culture used to come up with new ideas.

Well, here’s a new idea: a man trying to run a microbrewery on the moon. You can order that book here: