“It hasn’t affected the casting or hiring of writers or production staff or anything,” HBO boss Casey Bloys says.

You’re a (tolerant) wizard, Harry.

On Tuesday, HBO and Max CEO Casey Bloys announced that the upcoming Harry Potter TV show hasn’t “felt any impact” from author J.K. Rowling’s anti-transgender views, despite her involvement in the development process as executive producer.

“She’s been fairly involved — she was very involved in the process of selecting the writer and the director,” Bloys told the room of reporters at HBO’s 2025 preview presentation at the London Hotel in West Hollywood, Calif. “I imagine she’ll have opinions on casting. It hasn’t affected the casting or hiring of writers or production staff or anything, so we haven’t felt any impact from that.”

J.K. Rowling, Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson.Stuart C. Wilson/Getty; Warner Brothers/Courtesy Everett

Rowling has repeatedly made her negative stance on transgender issues known, sharing many, many controversial tweets and rhetoric that many deemed transphobic. The author’s comments over the years have been condemned by Harry Potter movie actors including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Eddie Redmayne, while Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes have come to her defense. Much of the Potter fandom have shunned the author, but Warner Bros. retained Rowling as executive producer for the upcoming TV series.

During Tuesday’s event, Bloys also predicted a potential early 2027 premiere date for the series. “But don’t hold me to any of that, because we’re just getting started with the writing and casting process,” the exec quickly added.

One of the big obstacles the TV adaptation faces is how quickly the young actors will age, since all seven seasons narratively take place in seven consecutive years but TV production schedules can sometimes take multiple years in between seasons.

“It is something we’re thinking about,” Bloys said. “One of the ideas we talked about was shooting the first season and the second season very close to each other, time-wise, because the kids, from 11 to 13 is a big jump in kids’ lives. You can get away with 13 to 15, something like that. So we are going to have to think about scheduling and shooting so that they don’t grow too much between seasons. It is a consideration.”

Bloys also added that “an annual schedule will be tough” to roll out each season. “But it depends on how much is written ahead of time,” he said.

From showrunner, writer, and executive producer Francesca Gardiner (Succession, His Dark Materials, Killing Eve), the Harry Potter TV show has been billed as a “faithful adaptation” of the beloved book series. The series is expected to run for seven seasons, adapting each book from the franchise. Mark Mylod (Succession, Game of Thrones, The Last of Us) will also executive produce and direct multiple episodes.

HBO recently launched an open casting call to fill the main roles of Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, and Hermione Granger, calling on children between the ages of nine and 11 who are residents of the U.K. or Ireland. The casting call emphasized a commitment to “inclusive, diverse casting” without “regard to ethnicity, sex, disability, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other basis protected by law unless otherwise specifically indicated.”