TV show reboot

[sunnyskywalker]

They haven't even finished with the Fantastic Beasts franchise, and already the books are getting a reboot, this time as a TV series. It will supposedly be "authentic to the original books." Whatever that means. JKR will be an executive producer, so maybe "authentic to what she intended to write or imagines she wrote."

I can't help but be morbidly curious. Will the Dursleys be blond? Will the reboot stick all the adults in robes instead of vaguely bohemian but mostly normal clothes? Will the Marauders generation look their ages instead of 20-30 years older? Will we get Dudley hiding in fear behind Vernon instead of eating cake, the full story of the prank, SPEW, the full set of Pensieve memories, Marietta's scarring, and Harry gleefully hexing Filch twice while his schoolmates look on and laugh? Will we get full-on flashbacks for some of the historical scenes? Will authenticity mean putting in the bits JKR totally meant to write but didn't, like the Slytherins triumphantly returning to fight? Will we get bonus material from the "ghost plots" that didn't make it into the books, like the backstory about Dean's father?

And, of course, will Harry have his mother's eyes for real this time? Since apparently that was important enough to yap about for seven whole books/eight movies...

Comments

[chantaldormand]

I imagine that Rita (and possibly Marge) will be even more demonised now that Jo came out of her TERF closet. Not that the mental image of suspiciously masculine Rita dragging Harry into a closet and trying to get him emotionally vulnerable wasn't already disgusting on Rowling's part.

But I wonder: what colour of skin will Hermione have? Will Jo stick to her "I meant her to be black!" defence of the play, or will we see another lily-white actress and the whole controversy will be swept under the rug?

[sunnyskywalker]

Ugh, yes. It was already uncomfortable every time she disparaged a female character for being too big-boned or hairy to be "properly" feminine. (Not that you want to be too feminine, of course! That would also be bad!) As if women don't already hear enough about how their bodies aren't "correct" according to someone else's arbitrary standards. Now it's just skin-crawling.

Did she go that far? I'd heard her say she never specified that Hermione had to be white, so therefore she could be black--which sounds like taking credit for vagueness that wasn't actually intentional, so I'm not giving her any points for it. But it's strictly accurate that the books never said that Hermione was definitely 100% white Anglo. (Based on some of the descriptions, she'd be a fair-skinned black person if she is black, but that's fine. Lots of real people fit that description.) They could also go with one of the other popular Hermione fanons and make her Jewish, but based on how badly the later books handle the Nazi allegories, that would probably end up being an offensive train wreck.

Hopefully they will at least cast someone with naturally curly/frizzy hair. And tweak the Yule Ball scene so she cuts down on the frizz but doesn't straighten it, because we have fair too many fictional makeover scenes trying where characters have to straighten their curls to be considered pretty.

[jana_ch]

JKR may be Trans Exclusionary, but she is not any kind of feminist, radical or otherwise. TE but not RF.

[nx74defiant]

My worry is her tendency to come up with new information out of nowhere and justifying it that it was in the plan all along.

Will they be able to stop her from saying something crazy like- well yes the books said the Hermione's dad was a muggle, but I planned for his backstory to be that he is a time-traveling Yeti forced to take human form after fleeing the destruction of Atlantis!

[chantaldormand]

At this point, I'm not sure even JKR knows which of her tweets/comments during interviews contain BS she came up on the spot and which contain nuggets of truth. So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if during this show Jo pulled the classical soap opera move of "Hermione was adopted by Grangers and in reality is secretly child of Weasleys' squib accountant cousin". Who may or may not be time-travelling Yeti pretending to be squib after fleeing Atlantis. But we won't learn until season 15 when writers will actively dig through JKR's Twitter feed to find some semi-decayed material for a filler episode.

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, no, not the Weasley cousin. Surely Hermione is the illegitimate child of James Potter,* thus shutting down the Harmonians once and for all! Because she probably still cares about that. And underestimates the internet.

*But conceived before he started dating Lily due to time-travel shenanigans which may or may not have involved an Atlantean Yeti.

ETA: I forgot that she actually mentioned on Pottermore at some point that one of her early notions was to have the Grangers somehow find baby Harry and take him in. So he and Hermione would have been foster siblings.

[nx74defiant]

not sure even JKR knows which of her tweets/comments during interviews contain BS she came up on the spot and which contain nuggets of truth

I really doubt she knows or more importantly cares.