Harry Potter Is Officially Replacing Its Original Audience

HBO’s Harry Potter TV show has shifted its target audience compared to the books or the original movies, and this presents an intriguing problem. Officially, the target audience for the Harry Potter books sits between the ages of 9 and 14. The first three installments are meant to appeal to older children and pre-teens, allowing them to grow into the more mature final four installments, aimed at teenagers. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Harry Potter can’t be enjoyed by adult viewers and readers, but they weren’t the original target audience.

Viewers and readers who were Harry Potter‘s target audience when the books and movies first came out are now all grown up, and they continue to be a large portion of the overall fanbase. It’s likely for this reason that HBO’s Harry Potter TV show has taken on a very deliberate shift. The very first season of this remake series, which adapts Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone—targeted at 9 to 12-year-olds—is officially rated TV-14. To put this further into contrast, the first Harry Potter movie was rated PG. The Harry Potter movies eventually climbed up to a PG-13 rating, and this adjustment matched the growing maturity of the original books. The idea is that young kids grow up alongside Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and as these central characters mature, so does the story. It’s significant, therefore, that HBO’s Harry Potter would start things off with a recommended viewer age of 14 years or older.

This doesn’t mean that younger children can’t watch the Harry Potter TV show, just as adults were never barred from the books and movies. Still, it’s interesting that HBO would shift the model here. The idea is almost certainly to ensure that the show in its entirety appeals to Harry Potter‘s most devoted fans—those who have been following along for decades. The consequence of this, however, is that it alienates the audience that these stories were always meant to reach.

The Harry Potter IP Is Still Struggling To Prioritize Its Audience

The cold truth here is that adult audiences are more profitable. Game of Thrones wouldn’t have been anywhere near as successful without that TV-MA rating. HBO couldn’t exactly go that far with Harry Potter, but just slapping on the TV-14 label instead of TV-PG sends a message to adult audiences that this adaptation is for them. It comes with promises that this will be a darker, grittier series, and that the full evils alluded to in the Harry Potter books will be brought to the surface.

Chances are, parents will still allow their younger children to watch the Harry Potter TV show, at least at first. However, without the “easing them in” approach of the books and movies, children may stop watching (or be made to stop watching) if that frightening imagery is too much out of the gate. It’s really a shame, since it feels as if HBO is throwing out one audience to replace it with a more profitable one.

Interestingly, this is happening as the Harry Potter IP releases a lot of new content targeted exclusively at children. Bloomsbury’s Pocket Potters collection is a series of short books by J.K. Rowling that tell the stories of several central characters in a format best suited to readers aged 7 to 10. The Wizarding World is being opened up to younger children, all while the TV remake shifts itself toward older viewers.

The franchise is certainly trying to ensure that there is a bit of Harry Potter for everyone. Bloomsbury’s Pocket Potters collection can introduce young children to the Wizarding World; the Harry Potter books and movies sit with that 9-to-14 age range, while the HBO show appeals more to adult fans. It’s not a bad approach in general, but it puts the TV show at higher risk of failure. After all, the Fantastic Beasts were aimed at adults, but abandoning child innocence led the spinoff astray. If HBO’s Harry Potter ignores children’s hearts, it could become a sterile mess, too.