How the Harry Potter TV show can avoid this adaptation trap

When it comes to TV and film adaptations of popular book series, pacing is everything. It doesn't matter how big the budget is, how the series looks, the cast, and how good the performances are if the pacing is wrong.

How the story manages passing time or lack thereof can make or break an adaptation. It's the main problem the Harry Potter TV series needs to avoid.

For those who don't know, there's a Harry Potter TV series officially in the works at HBO. The series, helmed by Francesca Gardiner, will run for 10 years, according to HBO Casey Bloys when the project was announced in 2023.

As Deadline points out, the 10-year run likely means that the series will move away from the one-season-per-book rollout at some point in the series. And, that's the trap the Harry Potter series needs to avoid.

There are seven Harry Potter books, so we have to assume that will be split over 10 seasons if Bloys is to be believed. However, this story is not created equally in terms of plot. The first three Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling are much, much shorter than the last four. And, therein lies the problem.

The Harry Potter TV show can't afford to let the plot of the first three books and built-in fandom carry the show early. There needs to be a bigger, better, or more exciting hook to get into this story. If they simply remake the movies or go through the first books chapter by chapter, you'll see the audience tune out.

That's what has happened with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Instead of making bold, decisive swings right out of the gate, the show played it safe and focused on the wrong things (the mystery of characters' identities). Now, we're in the middle of the second season and many fans have already stopped watching.

The first three books in the Harry Potter series are relatively thin compared to what we learn later. Those books were easily translated into films without losing a lot of substance. There are always changes, but Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban do a good job of skimming over the unimportant bits. The same can't be said about the final five movies covering the final four books in the series.

The TV series can't start with Vernon Dursley going to work at Grunnings the day after Voldemort killed Lily and James Potter like in the Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone book. It can't start with Dumbledore apparating to Privet Drive, meeting Professor McGonagall, and waiting for Hagrid to drop Harry off at the Dursleys on Siriru's bike like the movie. We've seen that before.

It makes so much more sense to start at a different point. Start with the Potters before their deaths. Start with the First Wizarding War. Show the audience something different before Harry is sent to live with the Dursleys.

I also believe it would be a mistake to stretch the first three books of the series into the first three seasons of the show. Those stories are quite compact and would be quite boring when stretched to 8-10 episodes. Unless they're doing a lot more world-building or heavy-lifting with characters who are not Harry, Ron, and Hermione, it doesn't really make sense to give three full seasons to the stories of the first three books.

One of the worst things a TV show can do, especially an adaptation, is take a long time to get rolling. Things need to be exciting from the jump, and spending a full episode at the zoo for Dudley's birthday seems like a waste of time. It was covered in the show in a few minutes.

For me, I'm hoping the TV series doesn't just remake the movies. They have the opportunity to dive much deeper into the events that the movies skipped, and I hope they do that. I just really hope that happens in the back half of the series rather than early in the series.

There's no perfect way to make an adaptation, but taking a bigger risk and doing something different can definitely pay dividends down the line and build trust with viewers for future seasons.