Someone should tell Warner Bros: there’s no such thing as magic. No matter how uncanny the rabbit from the hat, how mesmeric the levitation, it’s always just an illusion. The notion of readapting Harry Potter for a new TV series – as the studio is currently in talks to do – has the neon allure of a great magic trick. One wave of the wand, and you’ve got a seven-season TV sensation at your fingertips. An army of devotees conjured in a flash. That’s the idea, of course. But for us muggles in the real world, things are never so simple.
The truth is, there have been signs for years that Harry Potter’s spell over the general public may be slowly wearing off. This is somewhat inevitable, of course, when you have a brand as globally popular as JK Rowling’s wizarding series once was. The books on their own have made billions of pounds; the eight film adaptations, starring Daniel Radcliffe as the tousle-haired boy wizard, made just as much. Potter’s early 2000s ubiquity was never going to be sustainable.
