But because the championship’s aerial antics were not strictly necessary to understand the book’s conclusion, the match itself was cut from the movie. To take one example: In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the Quidditch World Cup begs to be dramatized as the magical equivalent of the Super Bowl. Certain fan favorites from the books, like Peeves the poltergeist, never appear, and some cinematic scenes from the books were left on the cutting-room floor. In their attempt to encompass this material, the movies often feel more like trailers, churning through plot without fully explaining it and nodding to meaningful character moments while never quite letting them breathe. Rowling’s saga totals more than 3,000 pages, with the later installments growing notoriously long. To begin with, the Potter novels were never going to fit into the run time of feature films. Harry Potter was always meant to be a TV series, and it provides a perfect study in why so many books today make for better television than film. Rather, the movie medium was never well suited to the seven-year story of the beloved boy wizard. But as art, they left a lot to be desired-and not because of a lack of creative effort.

Judged as fan service that considerately condensed the celebrated series for the silver screen, the Potter movies were an undeniable success. What could a TV version possibly offer audiences that the popular movies hadn’t already?īut I had a different reaction: It’s about time.

The original Potter film franchise grossed more than $2 billion. When HBO recently announced that it would be adapting the Harry Potter series into a television show, devoting at least one season to each book, some critics were skeptical.

Harry's books