HBO's Harry Potter teaser looks like someone put a duplication spell on Chris Columbus' original

The first teaser for HBO's Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, a show that will give J.K. Rowling millions to donate to transphobic causes, arrived this afternoon.

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  March 25, 2026 | 3:52pm
Image courtesy of HBO
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HBO's Harry Potter teaser looks like someone put a duplication spell on Chris Columbus' original

HBO has released the first teaser for Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, which means we’re nine months away from realizing how integral John Williams’ score was toward making 2001’s Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone such a unique blockbuster. Sure, the books were huge and the casting basically perfect, but with this new teaser for Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, HBO’s upcoming television remake of the series, it’s clear that not much has changed at Hogwarts. The only real noticeable change is that Hans Zimmer’s score—if that is his score—doesn’t contain an ounce of the magic that the first Potter teaser conjured. It’s the story we know, with new actors in similar costumes, and sets that look cribbed from Columbus’ design book. Only now, billionaire Potter author J.K. Rowling, who has spent the last decade using her fortune and influence to discriminate against trans people, stands to become even wealthier and more influential thanks to the show. 

But even if the show wasn’t financially supporting hateful gender-essentialist ideology, it would still look like copied homework. The teaser follows the beats that anyone who has read the books or seen the first movie should be familiar with. Harry lives with his evil aunt and uncle, gets accepted to Hogwarts, meets Hagrid (Nick Frost), and goes to Hogwarts. None of it looks particularly unique from Chris Columbus’ original, though it will be much longer, so that’s something. Even little Dominic McLaughlin, who plays Harry, looks like a young Daniel Radcliffe. There just isn’t that much new here. Well, aside from the decade of increasingly alarming rhetoric from Potter’s creator, who has been cooking her brain on X at such an alarming rate that being a TERF is sort of her whole personality now. 

 
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