Accio Harry Potter news! As pre-production ramps up on HBO's ambitious, decade-spanning Harry Potter series ahead of a planned summer shoot, casting announcements on the show have been coming faster than a speeding Knight Bus. And now, following last month's reveal of the newcomers who'll be playing Harry, Ron, and Hermione in the reboot, last night brought with it a whopping nine new additions to the role call — including Johnny Flynn (Emma) as Lucius Malfoy, Katherine Parkinson (The Boat That Rocked) as Molly Weasley, and Bel Powley (The King Of Staten Island) as Petunia Dursley.
Per Warner Bros.' official press release, Flynn, Parkinson, and Powley will be joined by Daniel Rigby as Vernon Dursley, Bertie Carvel as Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, and — bolstering the screen newcomer ranks (and Hogwarts' register) — Lox Pratt as Draco Malfoy, Leo Earley as Seamus Finnigan, Alessia Leoni as Parvati Patil, and Sienna Moosah as Lavender Brown. Powley and Rigby's casting as the Dursleys, previously played by Fiona Shaw and the late Richard Griffiths, follows Paapa Essiedu's Severus Snape appointment in a trend of the show skewing younger than the movies with its principal characters, following the books more closely than its big-screen progenitor. It also potentially opens up the on-screen Harry/Dursleys dynamic a little more, with the implication of Petunia having lost her sister in her early twenties and suddenly finding herself looking after Lily's orphan as well as her own son creating an at least marginally more empathetic background for that particular family dynamic.
Anyway, speculation aside, with these latest additions — and the recent locking in of Hogwarts' teaching line-up — showrunner Francesca Gardiner and director/co-producer Mark Mylod's journey to Hogwarts is really picking up a head of steam as Leavesden prepares to become the Wizarding World once more. Now just to see who'll be playing Lord Voldemort and, more importantly, Peeves. We wonder, we wonder...