HBO's New Fantasy Series Officially Making TV History In 1 Month

Nov 14, 2026 - 11:09

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HBO's New Fantasy Series Officially Making TV History In 1 Month

Professor Quirrell in the Harry Potter TV show

Published Nov 14, 2026, 2:00 AM EST

Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more.

Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."

HBO's new fantasy series is officially set to make TV history, and for a network with such a huge track record when it comes to the genre, this is quite impressive. HBO's best TV shows over the years have come in different genres. For instance, there have been many successful crime thrillers, such as True Detective, The Sopranos, The Wire, and more.

That said, the genre is not the only one to find success at HBO, which has had huge sci-fi hits like Westworld, and in terms of fantasy shows, simply started the most popular genre universe the small screen has perhaps ever seen. I'm talking about the Game of Thrones franchise, which includes the original series and two spin-offs so far.

Those are House of the Dragon, which will end with its upcoming fourth season, and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which debuted in 2026 and already has another season on the way. However, HBO's knack for fantasy series extends beyond just its lucrative Game of Thrones universe, and a new 2026 series is coming to make TV history.

As many might have suspected, the upcoming HBO TV show in question is the Harry Potter reboot series, whose season 1 has been titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone after the first J.K. Rowling book. HBO's Harry Potter TV show debuts on HBO and HBO Max on December 2025, aka Christmas. For one key reason, it makes TV history, doing something that has never been done before in the medium.

HBO's Harry Potter Series Makes TV History With Its Movie To Show Plan

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first season of a fantasy series that is making history for the simple fact that no other $8 billion or so film franchise has then moved to TV with a full-on reboot that follows the same characters and/or story, only with a different cast and some expansions to original adaptation. When major movie franchises tend to go to the small screen, it is usually with prequel shows, sequels, or spin-offs. For instance, Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power features movie characters, but is set several years before the films.

Again on that streaming service, rather than retelling Peter Parker's origin story, the Spider-Man franchise chose to follow another version of the character from the multiverse in Nicolas Cage's Spider-Noir. On Disney+, both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars have come out with a wide array of animated and live-action series in recent years, and none of them are full-on reboots of the stories in their movie franchises, as the projects that feature movie characters all tell new stories. On HBO Max itself, the DC franchise has expanded with completely different shows of diverse genres, characters, and so on.

As such, by taking one of the highest-grossing movie franchises of all time and rebooting it on the small screen, but with the same characters and general story, HBO's Harry Potter series is making TV history. Harry, Ron, and Hermione have been recast, with Dominic McLaughlin, Alastair Stout, and Arabella Stanton, respectively, taking over the roles. The only movie actor reprising his character is Warwick Davis, who once again gives life to Professor Filius Flitwick.

Why HBO's Harry Potter TV Reboot Makes Sense, Even If Released Early

Harry looking frightened while pointing his wand in Harry Potter

I'm going to be honest, I never expected Harry Potter to be rebooted so soon. Even with all the controversies surrounding Rowling in recent years, making live-action Harry Potter TV shows, perhaps one being the Marauders prequel fans have been asking for so long about, or adapting the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play into a sequel movie or movies with the original franchise cast returning seemed like more plausible choices. Still, 15 years after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 was released in theaters, the franchise is being rebooted as a TV show.

While I believe it is too early for such a project, there is indeed a lot from the books that never made it into the movie franchise. From entire characters, like the charismatic Peeves and Ron's brother, Charlie Weasley, to exploring all the cut Tom Riddle backstory elements from The Half-Blood Prince that would make Voldemort more complex, there is a lot the TV show can now do with a book being adapted per season. HBO's Harry Potter can also stay fresh with different designs, cinematography, and set pieces compared to the films, but no matter what it chooses, just by existing, it is making TV history.