Who’re the brains behind Succession introduced in for HBO’s Harry Potter? | Harry Potter

Feuding kids with extra energy than sense, an unpredictable previous man who is aware of rather more than he lets on, and an establishment staffed by individuals with ulterior motives. Is it any shock, then, that when it got here to its extremely anticipated TV adaptation of Harry Potter, HBO bosses opted for 2 of the brains behind Succession?

The corporate’s first official casting announcement for its “decade-long” Potter sequence put the wizarding world again within the highlight this week. And imbued with the facility to make or break the fandom’s goals are the Succession alumni Francesca Gardiner, who serves as showrunner, and Mark Mylod, who will direct a number of episodes.

The Britons may even function government producers alongside JK Rowling, who interviewed them and praised their “real ardour” for the books. “Having learn Francesca’s pilot script and heard Mark’s imaginative and prescient, I’m sure the TV present will greater than stay as much as expectations,” the writer mentioned after a four-month choice course of. However what is understood of the pair who’ve been handed the keys to Hogwarts?

Mylod was born within the English hamlet of Newton Abbot, within the south-west, in 1965 (his mom was a manufacturing facility employee, his father a police officer), and dropped out of college at 17 to hunt success in London theatre. “I had no {qualifications},” he advised the LA Occasions. “I by no means wished to be an actor, however I did have fantasies of being a director.”

The fantasy got here true, and Mylod’s trajectory over a profession spanning three a long time has been large, starting from low-budget British comedies to what is going to in all probability be one of the high-budget reveals in tv historical past (at a price of greater than $200m a season).

His profession started as a scene changer at Theatre Royal Haymarket and, later, a manufacturing assistant on the BBC. His early directing work included quintessential British reveals such because the BBC comedy panel recreation Taking pictures Stars and the Royle Household, a sitcom in regards to the lives of a television-fixated Manchester household, which earned him two Bafta TV awards.

Nevertheless it was Mylod’s work on the pilot of the unique UK model of Shameless in 2004 that caught HBO’s consideration. Additionally set in Manchester, on the fictional Chatsworth council property, the present revolved across the dysfunctional Gallagher household and depicted English working-class life and tradition.

An invite by HBO to direct an instalment of Entourage led to Mylod directing 23 episodes and serving as an government producer. It was a twin function he went on to carry out on Showtime’s pilot of The Affair and its US model of Shameless. He additionally directed a number of episodes of HBO’s Recreation of Thrones throughout a number of seasons.

When Succession got here alongside, HBO teamed Mylod up with the creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong – a partnership that proved extremely profitable. Mylod directed episodes together with This Is Not for Tears, All of the Bells Say, and Connor’s Marriage ceremony. He received an Emmy and a Administrators Guild of America award for his work on the sequence. “My collaboration with Mark is up there as one of the fruitful and significant I’ve had in my profession,” Armstrong advised the LA Occasions.

His different credit embrace the movies Ali G Indahouse (2002), The Massive White (2005), What’s Your Quantity? (2011), and The Menu (2022). And he directed episode 2 of the second season of HBO’s post-apocalyptic sequence The Final of Us, which premieres this weekend.

Mylod has spoken about his choice to “take into consideration the larger image” when engaged on a present, together with the arc of the characters, the arc of the story, and the general tone. He has mentioned his ambition on Succession was to “actually attempt to peel again the layers on these apparently despicable characters” and “discover that vulnerability, that interior youngster”.

Mylod has additionally mentioned he doubts he’ll “ever have that type of collaboration” that he had with Armstrong once more. But when Potter is to work on the identical degree, he and Gardiner must forge one other one-of-a-kind partnership.

Like Mylod, Gardiner is one other entrenched member of the HBO household. The author, who has beforehand spoken of figuring out with Hermione Granger and her “unappealing want to be high of the category”, was born in 1983 and hails from a household of creatives. Her mother and father are the classical violinist Elizabeth Wilcock and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, an internationally famend conductor (who pulled out of the BBC Proms after assaulting a male vocal soloist, earlier than beginning a brand new orchestra and choir).

Gardiner grew up on the 650-acre Gore Farm in rural Dorset earlier than attending the Bryanston Faculty, the place she recollects weeping her means by way of Philip Pullman novels, and the London Nationwide Movie and Tv Faculty, the place she wrote her thesis on darkness in childhood tales.

In 2019, she was employed by Emerald Fennell as a “author’s good friend” on season 2 of the Emmy award-winning sequence Killing Eve, performing as a bridge between the scripting course of and the actors. “[Gardiner] is an incredible communicator of tone and imaginative and prescient,” Sally Woodward Mild, the founding father of Sid Mild Movies, advised Deadline. “She is a robust advocate for individuals round her … she’s conscious of the human facet of the whole lot.”

Others who know Gardiner praised her collaborative spirit, evident throughout her time on Succession, which she joined in 2021 as consulting producer and author, and on the HBO and BBC adaptation of His Darkish Supplies, the place she served as government producer and author. Jack Thorne, lead author on His Darkish Supplies, mentioned she was “constantly fearless” about adapting Pullman’s books.

Whereas little is understood in regards to the specifics of Gardiner’s imaginative and prescient (her author’s room contains Killing Eve’s Laura Neal and Briarpatch’s Andy Greenwald), she has been vocal about her dislike of patronising kids and sanitising horror. “She feels very strongly that she must honour the books”, Mild advised Deadline.

Whether or not we’ll get a scene of Dumbledore telling Harry and his gang that they’re “not critical individuals” within the method of Logan Roy is but to be seen – however with Gardiner and Mylod on the helm, we will dream.