One of the few actors returning to the Harry Potter HBO Max reboot has some great news for fans of the franchise. The new Harry Potter series will take all the books in the J.K. Rowling series and adapt them into a television format, with a planned 10-season series. This is excellent news for people who loved the books, since the movies were only two to three hours each, which means a lot of the smaller plots and characters were omitted due to time constraints. With the television series, there is more time to tell the story, and beloved characters and events from the books that the movies never showed can finally come to life.
In a discussion about the upcoming HBO Max Harry Potter series, returning star Warwick Davis has some great news for fans. Davis is one of the only actors from the movies coming back to the HBO series, as he plays Professor Filius Flitwick in both. According to Davis, “I can’t really tell you anything other than we’re retelling those wonderful stories but with more depth and detail than has been seen before. They’re very faithful adaptations of the book.”
Warwick Davis talked to Times Radio about the HARRY POTTER TV series:
“I’m working on it at the moment, but I can’t really tell you anything other than we’re retelling those wonderful stories but with more depth and detail than has been seen before. They’re very faithful… pic.twitter.com/cniPDRoZi1
— Wizarding World Direct (@WW_Direct) January 3, 2026
He also admitted that they are telling the same stories, but that it will be a lot more of what happened in the books that the films didn’t show. He also said it is still very familiar. “We’re obviously telling the same story, so there are similar moments that we’re experiencing as actors on the set,” Davis said. “But it’s weird being back in the same studios again, doing it all again, because Leavesden is where we shot the films.”
Harry Potter HBO Max Series Needs to Be Faithful to the Books
Image Courtesy of Warner Bros
When Warwick Davis said that the HBO Max Harry Potter series needs to be faithful, what it needs to pay the most attention to is the books. The movies are already there, and there is no reason to copy what they already did with new actors. Instead, what the HBO Max series needs to do is take what happened in the books and adapt them for the small screen. While this will overlap with things that happened in the movies, the Harry Potter series should do a better job of deepening the storylines.
There are so many great ideas from the books that got skipped over in the movies. One of the big things the books did was leave a red herring that Neville Longbottom might have been the real Chosen One. The films did hint at this, but only in small ways. On the other hand, the books had many readers suggesting it was Neville in between book releases toward the end, and Neville could become a bigger part of the streaming series.
One of the best characters the movies completely neutered was Ginny Weasley, who was an extremely powerful and important character in the books. Harry and Ginny ended up together at the end of the movies and books, but the books showed why she was just as strong as her future husband, and the HBO Max series needs to do a better job of making her an important character.
There are also lots of smaller plots that the movies left out for timing concerns that could and should be added back for the HBO Max Harry Potter series. This includes Hermione starting the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, the back story about the Marauders (James, Sirius, Lupin, and Peter), and characters like Peeves the Poltergeist and Kreacher.
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