The Wizarding World Takes Shape: HBO Announces Key “Harry Potter” Series Casting Updates
HBO’s Harry Potter series is coming into focus. Following the casting news of the core three—Dominic McLaughlin as Harry Potter, Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger, and Alastair Scout as Ron Weasley—nine new cast members have just been revealed.
The new cast includes the Malfoys and Dursleys, crucial characters in the Potterverse. The first season of the HBO series will cover the events in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
“Black Mirror” Creator Charlie Brooker on Remaking Reality
Charlie Brooker is known for many things, and depending on whom you ask, you might get a different answer. In England, where Brooker was born, you may hear about cult comedies The 11 O’Clock Show, Brass Eye, or Nathan Barley, which he wrote, or maybe Newswipe, where he satirizes current events, or the fictionalized reality show Dead Set about zombies attacking the Big Brother house.
Lighting Alex Cross’s World: DP Brendan Steacy on Creating Cinematic TV for Aldis Hodge’s Determined Detective
Created by Ben Watkins for Amazon Prime, the crime thriller Cross feels more like top-tier cinema than a police procedural. Based on James Patterson’s “Alex Cross” novels, the series’ first season (it’s already been picked up for a second) is taut and moody, following D.C. homicide detective Alex Cross (Aldis Hodge) as he pursues a serial killer on the job while struggling in his personal life with the murder of his wife, Maria (Chauntée Schuler Irving).
Paul Giamatti on Finding Redemption in the Most Human “Black Mirror” Season 7 Episode
Seven seasons in, Charlie Brooker’s anthology series Black Mirror still gets under your skin. Usually, the load is heavy and dark, with characters’ lives driven to unambiguously worse places by technology we don’t yet have, but it feels like it may come frighteningly soon. But there’s one episode in this most recent season, Eulogy, starring Paul Giamatti, that stays in your mind for its emotional rewiring of one lonely man’s core memories.
How Cinematographer & Director Jessica Lee Gagné Shaped “Severance” Season 2’s Most Devastating Episode
After racking up 14 Emmy nominations for its first season in 2022, Severance returned this spring with a much-ballyhooed set of episodes that fortifies the show’s stature as a dread-saturated mind game drama on par with Twin Peaks and Lost. In the Apple TV+ + series, creepy experiments conducted by cult-like Lumon Industries center on split personalities (Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, and Dichen Lachmann) wrestling with their “innie/outie”
From Converse to Converts: How “The Last of Us” Costume Designer Ann Foley Mapped Ellie’s Dark Journey Toward Vengeance
In a world decimated by zombies, human survivors don’t have much time to worry about fashion, which explains why form follows function in The Last of Us. In the HBO Max drama, which concluded its shocking second season with a May 25 finale, characters primarily focus on staying warm and as dry as possible. Most of our major players in season two had two goals: revenge and killing any of the infected who got in their way.
HBO’s “Harry Potter” Series Casts its Young Harry, Hermione, and Ron
A trio of young wizards has just earned admission to Hogwarts.
HBO’s Harry Potter series has found its Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley in Dominic McLaughlin, Arabella Stanton, and Alastair Scout, respectively. These three newcomers will take the roles made famous by Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Emma Watson as Hermione, and Rupert Grint as Ron across eight feature films.
“After an extraordinary search led by casting directors Lucy Bevan and Emily Brockmann,
“The Handmaid’s Tale” DP Nicola Daley on Bringing the Story of Elizabeth Moss’s June Home
The sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale picks up where it left off: on a train driving away from Gilead. June (Elisabeth Moss) is aboard, headed for Alaska, and so is her former tormentor, Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), the latter woman’s fortunes in Gilead having tumbled after the death of her husband, Fred (Joseph Fiennes). Each with a child in tow, June and Serena are seeking safety, but neither will keep it once they find it.
Building the First “Black Mirror” Sequel: How Production Designer Miranda Jones Upgraded the USS Callister Universe
Back in Season 4 of Black Mirror, an enthusiastic programmer, Nanette (Cristin Milioti), gets trapped in a virtual-reality game by its creator and her boss, Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons). Shy and self-minimizing in real life, Nanette’s in-game clone is creative and confident enough to lead the rest of her colleagues, also trapped as crew by Daly on the starship USS Callister, out through a wormhole. Black Mirror picks up the thread with a sequel in Season 7,
Crafting Continental Studios: How Julie Berghoff Built Seth Rogen’s Fictional Production Powerhouse in “The Studio”
In The Studio, the fast-talking movie executives who make and sell motion pictures to mass audiences might use “on the nose” as a pejorative. But sometimes, the obvious solution can’t be denied. For show creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, there was only one place to set their behind-the-scenes look at how cinematic sausage gets made: Warner Bros. Studios.
The Burbank, California backlot serves as headquarters for the fictional Continental Studios.
Ground-Level Galaxy: “Andor” DP Christophe Nuyens on Making the Most Visceral “Star Wars” Story Ever Told
The satisfactions of Tony Gilroy‘s Andor were such that many viewers comforted themselves when the series came to an end on May 13 by immediately turning to Rogue One, the 2016 feature film that Andor served as a prequel series for. Such has been the power of Andor—it’s been hard to let go, and there’s no better way to keep the rebel spirit alive than by following Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) story to its bittersweet conclusion.
One-Shot Wonders: How Casting Director Shaheen Baig Assembled the Perfect Cast for “Adolescence”
Co-created by and co-starring Stephen Graham, Netflix’s four-part series Adolescence has been a widely viewed hit for the streaming site. Nothing about casting the show, about an otherwise ordinary boy, Jamie (Owen Cooper), who has been influenced to such a malign degree by his online life that he becomes capable of murdering a classmate, Katie (Emilia Holliday), was standard operating procedure. Each episode is a single take, and finding an actor young enough to play the difficult role of thirteen year old Jamie and do so while shooting repeat one-shots was no small feat.
Rufus Sewell on Playing ‘The Good Guy’s Bad Guy’ in Netflix’s “The Diplomat”
A proper English thespian who originated a role in Tom Stoppard’s Laurence Olivier Award-winning play Arcadia fresh out of acting school, Rufus Sewell has since excelled as a character actor with leading man looks. Over the past few years he’s played a sadistic aristocrat (The Illusionist); a Nazi (The Man in the High Castle); an astrophysicist (Eleventh Hour);
Designing Dance: Production Designer Bill Groom’s Meticulous Ballet World-Building in “Étoile”
In the world of ballet as dramatized in Étoile, prickly personalities throw tantrums one minute and dance with exquisite grace the next. Created by former dancer Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Dan Palladino, the Amazon Prime series (now streaming) follows imagines a contentious talent swap between New York and Parisian dance companies desperate to create buzz about their new seasons.
It doesn’t go well.
The quarrelsome characters include Cheyanne (Lou De Laâge) the world’s best ballet dancer and eco-activist who publicly denounces the company’s billionaire arms-dealer benefactor;
Lighting Love in LA: How “Nobody Wants This” DP Adrian Peng Correia Lit Netflix’s Coziest Rom-Com
The moment Nobody Wants This became one of Netflix’s most beloved romantic comedies comes at the end of the second episode. Rabbi Noah (Adam Brody) and podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell) have been glancing off one another in an uneasy will-they-or-won’t-they start to their relationship that finally ends in a kiss over ice cream. But it’s not just any kiss, Joanne later tells her sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe), but the greatest kiss of her life.
How Co-Creator & Showrunner Aeysha Carr Transformed “Government Cheese” into a Series of Indie Film Experiences
If Wes Anderson and David Lynch partnered on a story set in 1969 about a Black family living in the San Fernando Valley, you might approximate the vibe of the new Apple TV+ show Government Cheese. The surrealist comedy is inspired by co-creator Paul Hunter’s childhood, and stars David Oyelowo as eternal optimist Hampton Chambers, a man chasing the American dream after being released from prison.
Hampton aims to repair the relationship with his wife Astoria (Simone Missick),
From Shadow to Spotlight: How Elizabeth Dulau’s Kleya Became the Hidden Heartbeat of “Andor”
Tony Gilroy‘s masterful Andor has come to an end. The two-season prequel to Gilroy’s 2016 film Rogue One just delivered arguably the finest storytelling in the Star Wars universe since The Empire Strikes Back. That’s a bold and possibly needless assertion, but if you watched the series (and if you’re reading this, you likely did), my guess is you’d agree. While season one fleshed out Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) fitful,
The Gauls Go Global: Inside Director Fabrice Joubert’s Vision for Netflix’s “Asterix & Obelix: The Big Fight”
It was in 1959 that Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo published their first comic strip about a village of Gauls resisting occupation by the Roman Empire.
In the nearly 70 years since, Asterix & Obelix have placated the Romans and conquered the entire world. It has become one of France’s most successful franchises, leading to 40 volumes of comics, 10 animated films, 5 live-action movies, games, merchandise, and a theme park.
The Renaissance Executive: How Jason Harvey’s Multifaceted Background Powers BET+’s Streaming Success
There are many things Jason Harvey is. Currently, he’s the EVP and General Manager of BET+, a subscriber-based streaming service cultivated around Black entertainment. With that title, he oversees the programming strategy, business operations, and revenue growth, among other responsibilities. Previously, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer, worked with Google to expand its digital advertising in Latin America, and authored a children’s book about entrepreneurship. Oh, and he’s fluent in Spanish and Portuguese – all this while being a husband and a father of four.
From Wakanda to Chicago: “Ironheart” Trailer Unveils Riri Williams’ High-Stakes Journey in Marvel’s Latest
We first met Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) on screen in Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Riri is a genius student inventor who the Wakandans tapped in a significant time of need—they’d just lost their Black Panther (the late, great Chadwick Boseman) and were facing a seriously uncertain future thanks to threats from Namor (Tenoch Huerta) and his vast army of ocean-dwelling Atlanteans. Thanks in part to Riri’s Tony Stark-level technical prowess,
