Does the Harry Potter HBO series feature a new take on Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Based on a new poster for the forthcoming TV show, it’s possible the castle may have received a bit of a glow-up.
The poster appeared on the official Harry Potter Instagram account on October 29 with the caption “Everyone in our world will know his name” and an image showing Dominic McLaughlin’s Harry, identified on the poster as the “Boy Who Lived,” with a reflection of Hogwarts in his glasses. Granted, it’s a small image, and even if there are some small changes visible, we can expect that the Hogwarts we see in the forthcoming series will look similar to the one seen in the original films thanks to the fact that it’s an attraction at both the Universal Studios theme park and the Leavesden studio tour in the United Kingdom.
If there are notable changes, that feels like an indication that the team behind the new Harry Potter TV show, the first season of which is titled “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” could present a different take on this beloved material than the film franchise that ran from 2001 to 2011. As we prepare for the new version of Harry’s story to hit the small screen, what else can we expect from this new HBO franchise?
The Harry Potter TV show on HBO promises to be a faithful adaptation of the book series
I already mentioned that Dominic McLaughlin is stepping into the role of Harry Potter — the boy who “lived,” in that he inexplicably defeated the Dark Lord Voldemort as an infant — well over a decade after Daniel Radcliffe wrapped up his run, but he’s far from the only fresh face in the Harry Potter TV series set to air on HBO. Alastair Stout and Arabella Stanton will play Harry’s best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, respectively, and join Harry during his first year at the wizarding institution of Hogwarts, where he finally finds a community after ten years of being raised by his cruel Muggle relatives Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley Dursley (Daniel Rigby, Bel Powley, and Amos Kitson, respectively).
The plan, as of this writing, is to spend one season on each of the seven novels contained in the Harry Potter series, which is … a pretty solid approach. Though the first three books are a somewhat manageable length for the adaptation process, the page counts start to balloon around the fourth installment, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” and even though its direct sequel “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” is the longest in the series (with a whopping 870 pages in the American edition), the two following books aren’t exactly an exercise in brevity. Dedicating a full season to each book does make sense, and this new look at Hogwarts is potentially exciting, but I want to encourage fans to exercise some caution in terms of getting their hopes up … because a lot of this series already looks somewhat familiar.
Most of our first looks at the Harry Potter TV show seem quite familiar
In May of 2026, we got a major look at the Harry Potter HBO sets with a glimpse at 4 Privet Drive, the Muggle dwelling where Harry lives a miserable life with the Dursleys. After that, more set photos started trickling in, and even director Chris Columbus — who directed the first two films in the Harry Potter franchise and produced the third while handing the reins to Alfonso Cuarón — publicly asked what the point of this all was after seeing shots of Dominic McLaughlin’s Harry and Nick Frost’s take on Rubeus Hagrid, the Hogwarts groundskeeper originally played by Robbie Coltrane.
I need to stress this again: There’s some corporate synergy at play here. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” cannot, to my understanding, drastically change any of the major sets or iconography we saw in the Harry Potter movies because, again, there’s a whole wizarding world at Universal Studios and a whole studio tour across the pond that draws in massive numbers of visitors every single year. HBO and Warner Bros. (and their new parent company Skydance) can’t simply present brand-new versions of structures like Hogwarts when we’ve pretty clearly established what the massive castle looks like elsewhere.
I do still think there will be some welcome changes within the Harry Potter series, though. Just recently, casting for Charlie Weasley and Harry’s late parents James and Lily Potter was announced for Season 1, which fixes an age issue for the latter and brings the former into the on-screen narrative when he doesn’t appear in any of the films. You can see for yourself when “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” finally premieres on Christmas Day 2026.
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