I also think that Hagrid's casting is poor. The actor doesn't sell it in the clip we get. Addy would have been an inspired choice I think.

 

Other than not leaning hard into the West Country accent, I don't think there's much to be said about that clip, either way. That one's gonna be a wait and see.

It will be interesting to see Lithgow's take on Dumbledore; he's certainly an accomplished actor.

Black Snape is bad for all the reasons already mentioned. The next worst character to make black would be Hermione, for many of the same reasons: Why doesn't she have any friends, why is she the target of most of Malfoy's "Mudblood" comments, why is she the only one who cares about slavery, is there a more sinister reason she didn't end up with the main character...

I can almost see the casting director carefully hedging their bets, on the Hermione front.

On that note, I feel bad for all of the children in this cast, and I hope their parents are smart enough to be hyper vigilant about their online activity, because those kids are going to need protecting from the creepy, violent, nutjobs, who will want to crucify them for touching anything related to Harry Potter. Without a single shred of sarcasm or irony, I hope the money is worth it. Between the risk of typecasting*, and the social hassles/dangers, they'd better be making fat bank off of this. It would be nice to think that grown-ass adults would leave them the hell alone; it would be nicer if that thought didn't presently make one a prototypical Pollyanna of an optimist.

Spoiler: *

Though Arabella Stanton is coming from the stage and, I imagine, Hollywood's tendency to typecast probably doesn't have as much effect on that sort of thing so, if anyone could do it, she could always go back to the stage for a while. Radcliffe did it, before he even finished with the Potter movies, at least in part to future-proof his career against such typecasting. That's if any of them even plan to continue acting, at all.

On a less fraught note, I hadn't kept up with much of the news about this show because A: Precedent has taught me not to hold out much hope for it, and B: It's been about a decade since I had HBO, so I likely won't be seeing it. Thus, I was surprised when I watched the trailer and saw Anton Lesser, A.K.A. Reginald Bright, A.K.A. Qyburn, was playing Ollivander. I just laughed and said, "Of course!" At first glance, he seems a naturally good fit for the role.

Plus, he already played a role in 2006's Miss Potter; coincidence?
Yes, actually; it's a complete coincidence. Don't be silly.

I had the vague impression they were filming some of his scenes early, and stockpiling them, but I don't recall why I was thinking that; it might have been my imagination, or just something I heard someone else speculating about.

The way things are, these days, they could easily drop him in a green/blue room or a Volume, film him acting against people in appropriately colored bodysuits, and then comp the rest of the actors in, later, when they're the right age, just in case. Barring that, while it is far less than ideal, they could 3D scan him, have him do line readings of all of his book dialog, with any extra material they suspect they might need, and use all of that, later, as fodder for 3D animators and AI voice reproduction (if they had sufficient permissions).

 

It's a HP tradition to have multiple actors for Dumbledore tbf.

 

I am withholding judgment on Snape until I actually see at least a scene with him.

There's a lot of speculation one can throw around. One thing is for sure though: the "critic" grifters will milk this endlessly. YouTube careers will be made on hatewatching this show and glazing the movies. I can already hear The Critical Drinker's drunken whining about how the show is woke and awful and the movies were perfect adaptations. I will enjoy these retards trying to reconcile virulent hatred of Arabella Stanton (Hermione in the show) with the praise of Emma Watson, considering that 10 years ago Emma Watson was catching flak from the same crowd of retards for gasp doing feminism.

I hope for the sake of every kid actor on the show that adults around them will keep them away from social media. The media discourse around the main three HP actors was ridiculous when those three were kids, can you even imagine the degree and volume of -isms that'll be launched at the new trio in the era of Trumpist politics? Holy fucking shit.

 

Well... Lox Prat did say in an interview that while the book always looked over Harry's shoulder around, we would follow other characters around too, including a scene at Malfoy Manor in season 1. There's also an unconfirmed rumor that we'll see Ron and Hermione receive their acceptance letters, which I'd say based on this image fom what looks like the kitchen at the Burrow seems accurate. So there's hope.

You mean moe like this?

Perhaps that's a long-term goal and this is simply stating a new and more book-adherent continuity to tie it to?

 

The trailer was meh to me. As soon as they announced a black Snape, I pretty much checked out of this supposedly 'more book accurate' version.

Snape's entire backstory is about his bigotry, how he can't wait to join the magical KKK, and how he called his best friend a racial slur. That's the absolute last character in the fandom that should be race swapped, and I have absolutely no faith that they won't make a fucking mess of whatever they're doing with him.

 

Wow... There's so many problems with this assessment. xD