The Harry Potter franchise, including both the books and the movies, has grown to be one of the highest grossing franchises in history, having a net worth of about $25 billion dollars as of 2020. After the publication of the last book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in 2007, another book called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released in 2016. Based upon the original series, the sequel was written in a play/script format, and elaborated on the lives of Harry, Hermione, and Ron’s children after the initial defeat of Voldemort, the primary antagonist. Recently, there have been rumors that there will be a movie based on this sequel.

The play itself, surprisingly, received quite a bit of negative criticism from the Harry Potter fandom, mainly about how confusing and irrelevant the plot was compared to the original series. This may also be because it was not written by J.K. Rowling, but Jack Thorne and John Tiffany. 

“The play was sort of a Walmart version of Harry Potter’s Wizarding World. It wasn’t as detailed or well thought out as the original series,” said freshman Chloe Wong.

Nevertheless, the play still managed to win six Tony Awards in 2018.

Because Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is indeed a script for a play, it is traditionally performed on stage. According to various tweets by members of the Harry Potter fandom, it might be likely that we can expect an official filmed version of this play. 

Another Harry Potter-related series that Warner Bros. was working on is the Fantastic Beasts series. This set of prequels takes place before Harry Potter’s own generation, and explores a lot more of the Wizarding World. However, the Fantastic Beasts series is still being worked on by Warner Bros., which pushes the possible release date of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child further towards 2030. 

Most Harry Potter fans would love to see the original cast star in yet another Harry Potter movie, but chances of this happening are actually quite slim. Due to recent tweets accusing J.K. Rowling for being homophobic and racist (she retweeted multiple homophobic tweets supporting them), Daniel Radcliffe (who plays Harry Potter) stated that he would not be in the new movie if Rowling was involved in it.

Furthermore, Tom Felton (who plays Draco Malfoy) thinks that “it will [not] be reprised, to be honest… I think it was a wonderful eight chapters, and everything that needed to be done was done.” 

So even if the movie does in fact get filmed, chances are, the original cast will not be in it. This news saddened the majority of the Harry Potter fandom. There is a possibility that those who play the characters in the Cursed Child play will be the actors in the film version.

In short, the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child movie will most likely be delayed, or not happen at all. It is still very much undecided and the information and decisions regarding the production of this film is largely unknown to the general public.

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