Daniel Radcliffe has responded to inquiries about whether he would reprise as Harry Potter for Max’s upcoming in-development episodic adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s novels. The actor spoke to ComicBook.com while promoting the fourth season of TBS’s “Miracle Workers” and shot down the notion while wishing whomever takes his place as “the boy who lived” the best of luck.
“My understanding is that they’re trying to very much start fresh and I’m sure whoever is making them will want to make their own mark on it and probably not want to have to figure out how to get old Harry to cameo in this somewhere,” Radcliffe stated. “So, I’m definitely not seeking it out in any way. But I do wish them, obviously, all the luck in the world and I’m very excited to have that torch passed. But I don’t think it needs me to physically pass it.”
While having Radcliffe on hand to give his proverbial seal of approval to the next batch of wizarding students to play the characters associated with his eight-film franchise would seem to make sense, having Radcliffe cameo also might remind audiences that this isn’t the version of these stories they remember. For example, the cast of “Ghostbusters” (Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Ernie Hudson, etc.) cameoing in Paul Feig and Katie Dippold’s “Ghostbusters: Answer the Call” didn’t save that Kirsten Wiig/Melissa McCarthy/Leslie Jones/Kate McKinnon-starring remake from the “not my Ghostbusters” online controversy.
David Zaslav announced a re-adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s seven Harry Potter books at April’s big Max reveal event. Rowling will executive produce the televised adaptation, which will allegedly span a decade and will feature new obviously younger actors portraying Harry, Ron, Hermoine and the rest of the Hogwarts students.
“Max’s commitment to preserving the integrity of my books is important to me, and I’m looking forward to being part of this new adaptation which will allow for a degree of depth and detail only afforded by a long-form television series,” Rowling said in a statement released on April 12.
As previously reported by TheWrap, the books have sold, as of October 2021, around 27.4 million copies in the United Kingdom and over 500 million worldwide. The film versions began arriving between Book 4 in 2000 and Book 5 in 2003, with Chris Columbus’ “Harry Potter and the Sorcererer’s Stone” shattering box office records and grossing $974 million worldwide in late 2001, second at that time behind “Titanic” among all-time global grossers. The eight feature films, released between November 2001 and July 2011, grossed a combined $7.84 billion worldwide on a combined $1.15 billion budget.
“Fantastic Beasts” was initially promoted as a five-part prequel series, but audiences weren’t invested in the specific prequel franchise sans most characters associated with the Harry Potter series and interest peaked with the first $800 million-grossing installment. “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” earned just $400 million amid mixed-negative reviews in April 2022, with no fourth film officially on tap.
Conversely, while the recent multiplatform video game “Hogwarts Legacy” was released under a cloud of controversy over both Rowling’s allegedly transphobic public comments and accusations that the game’s goblin-rebellion plot dabbled in antisemitic stereotypes, it still sold 12 million copies and earned $850 million in its first two weeks of release.
Meanwhile, Radcliffe has spent the last decade building up an eclectic resume playing “Weird Al” Yankovic, a corpse in “Swiss Army Man” and the comic heavies in “Now You See Me 2” and “The Lost City” while headlining genre films like “Horns,” “The Woman In Black” and “Guns Akimbo.” If he does decide to return to Hogwarts in any capacity, it’ll be because he chooses to and not because he has to.
