When the last Harry Potter movie came out in 2011, no one expected there to be plans for a new film series within two and a half years, never mind a new film series and a new play.* And yet that’s exactly what’s happened. In September Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was announced, and now we’ve learned that J.K. Rowling is developing a Harry Potter play for the West End.
Accio tickets to London!
*It makes sense, because dolla dolla bills y’all, but I refuse to be cynical about more Harry Potter.
The yet-untitled play is expected to debut in 2015 and will have as its subject, according to a statement, “the previously untold story of Harry Potter’s early years as an orphan and outcast.” The play isn’t being written by Rowling, but she is co-producing and collaborating with the playwright, whomever that ends up being. The theatrical creds will be provided by producers Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender, who between them have worked on The Book of Mormon, the Broadway hit Lucky Guy, and the TV version of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Nicholas Nickleby. This is going to be no rinky-dink little production.
Rowling told the Daily Mail that she’s gotten a bunch of proposals for a Harry Potter stage show, but the version Friedman and Callender came up with
“…was the only one that really made sense to me, and which had the sensitivity, intensity and intimacy I thought appropriate for bringing Harry’s story to the stage.
After a year in gestation, it is very exciting to see this project moving onto the next phrase.”
It’s assumed that Warner Bros. will be involveded somehow, because like they’re going to let some other studio make money off Harry Potter. Pssht, please. Presumably Darren Criss won’t play Harry, probably because of some BS reason like he’s 15 years too old or not British or just because he was Harry in A Very Potter Musical and its sequels doesn’t mean he was ever in contention to reprise that role on the world-famous West End, StarKid fans, gosh.
Ahem. Anyway. Starting 2015 we can expect to see accidental magic, messy hair, and nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia on the West End. Start saving up for your big vacation now.
(via: Mail Online)
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