Rowling Tweets Casting Call for 2025 Harry Potter Television Adaptation

September 16, 2024 by Leave a Comment

Three very quick notes:

(1) They won’t start filming (or it casting?) until April of next year. No way this thing takes off until 2026. I’d like to hear ideas about why HBO-Warner Brothers-Bronte Studios are not fast-tracking this project because I’m clueless about everything to do with teevee.

(2) This is a casting call for the three children lead roles: Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger. Those are the biggest parts to cast correctly, but when will the hundred or so other players be chosen? Again, we’re still at the starting line on this project after they cast the soul triptych.

(3) If you have a minute, check out the comment thread on this tweet. There is a remarkable diversity of reactions to the HRH casting call; even Elon Musk checks in. Quite a few responders mention a hope that the almost invisible DEI verbiage at the bottom of the casting call does not mean ‘Black Hermione’ and ‘Gay Dumbledore,’ et ceteri/ae. Quite a few more decry the bigotry, racism, homophobia, et cetera ad nauseum, of anyone not thrilled by those possibilities.

People are really engaged by this adaptation and I expect it will act as a projection screen for fans beliefs about “representation” and for all those involved in the teevee program’s production, to include Rowling herself. Should you need proof that Harry Potter is the “Shared Text” of readers globally, young and old, this imminent and inevitable ‘acting out’ online by all the partisans should be a convincing demonstration.

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Sunday Potter Quiz: Wardrobe Boggart!

September 15, 2024 by 3 Comments

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Chapter 7

Mark True statements with a “T” and False statements with an “F.”

  1. _____  Chapter Seven, The Boggart in the Wardrobe, begins in Potions class where Malfoy enters in bandages. He asks Professor Snape for help with his work on the Shrinking Solution – and Severus makes Harry and Ron do the hard stuff.
  2. _____ Malfoy implies Harry is a coward for not hunting down Sirius Black himself instead of being in school. “If it was me,” he says, “I’d want revenge.”
  3. _____ Professor Snape takes five points from Gryffindor because Neville’s toad becomes a lizard instead of shrinking properly.
  4. _____ Professor Lupin takes the class into the Staffroom for a lesson about changing Professors into boggarts.
  5. _____ A real boggart is in the Staffroom wardrobe and Lupin takes this opportunity to teach the class how to defeat the Shape-changer that tries to frighten its antagonist: laughter.
  6. _____ Neville’s boggart turns into Professor Snape but he finishes him off with the Riddikulus charm and turning him into a lizard wearing a dress and a funny women’s hat.
  7. _____ Ron is afraid of spiders but succeeds in defeating his boggart by using the Riddikulus charm and putting roller skates on its many legs.
  8. _____ Lupin’s boggart turns into a “silvery white orb hanging in the air” which he defeats by using the Riddikulus charm and turning it into a cockroach.
  9. _____ Harry is upset at the end of class because he wasn’t able to turn his Dementor boggart into anything; the monster scared him so much that he almost passed out before Lupin intervened.
  10. _____ The chapter ends with Ron, Harry, and Hermione agreeing that Professor Lupin’s class was the best Defense Against the Dark Arts class they’d ever had. Hermione wishes she had had a chance against a boggart.

Share your answers in the comments boxes!

Filed Under: Chapter Quiz

Mailbag: Is Rowling Guilty of ‘Gender Appropriation’? Why ‘Robert Galbraith’?

September 14, 2024 by 1 Comment

Hi John,

A question that has been with me for a while is this: in light of Rowling’s position on transgender issues, what do we make of her use of a male-sounding pseudonym (JK Rowling) and an obviously male pseudonym (Robert Galbraith, with uber-masculine military backstory and all)? I mean, couldn’t this be considered gender appropriation? identifying as male?

Women writers have used male pseudonyms for a while to juice sales to male readers. Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) and Emily Bronte (Ellis Bell) are just two examples.

For one as stridently feminist as Rowling, why the male persona? Of course, in 1990s her initial editor likely advised her to use the initials to attract boy readers, thereby increasing sales, and she, as a writer new to the publishing industry, naively took the advice. But 15+ years later, the wildly successful author/millionaire commander of her empire, with 7+ books, multiple films, one or two theme parks, and philanthropic organizations behind her, was surely much more confident in her abilities, ideas, and beliefs, yet still chose a male persona to check on her popularity aside from the JKR reputation.

Anyway, I’m sure she’s a complex person, so the answer won’t be simple.

Am I just being a smart aleck or is there something to this?

I think it’s a great question; thank you for asking!

I want to take this in three different directions, any one of which three ideas could be the subject of its own post. The first is to dismiss pre-emptively the rot Rowling offers about her name choices as well as the suggestion that the words ‘gender appropriation’ inspire today, the second is the alchemical resolution of contraries into an hermaphroditic ‘Rebis,’ and the third is the Shakespearean psychomachia and mythic backdrop of the Strike-Ellacott series. Join me after the jump for my introductions to reasons why Rowling-Galbraith-Murray has chosen the pseudonyms that she has. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mailbag

Rowling-Solomon Interview July 2000: Seven Possible Points of Interest in 2024

September 13, 2024 by Leave a Comment

For the full four part transcript of the Evan Solomon interview with the Young Presence at the time of Goblet of Fire‘s publication, see “J.K. Rowling Interview,” CBCNewsWorld: Hot Type, July 13, 2000 over at Accio-Quotes’ Rowling interview archive.

After the jump I share the seven exchanges in this interview I think worthy of reflection in this Q&A almost a quarter century later, the best being the last, a surprise comment Rowling makes about her faith at the time of her mother’s death: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

‘J. K. Rowling on the Rowling Express:’ The Rowling Library Archived Interview

September 12, 2024 by Leave a Comment

In keeping with this month’s seeming theme of retro interview-review, here is a classic back and forth between a CBC reporter and J. K. Rowling in 2000 on a promotion tour for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Tomorrow? An ad hoc transcript and some thoughts. See you then!

Filed Under: Uncategorized