‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Youngster’ Play to Be Licensed for Faculty Productions

The play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Youngster, will quickly be out there for licensing for college productions. 

Producers Sonia Friedman Productions, Colin Callender and Harry Potter Theatrical Productions have partnered with Broadway Licensing Group to develop a model of the Broadway and West Finish present for top colleges and secondary colleges beginning in 2024. The producers are working with the artistic group to create a shortened model of the play, which presently runs greater than three hours on Broadway, and to create new particular results that may realistically be achieved by the colleges. 

“We’re delighted to be working with Broadway Licensing Group in order that colleges all over the world can stage their very own productions of Harry Potter and the Cursed Youngster. We’re very proud that over half of the play’s audiences worldwide have been first time theatregoers. With this colleges model, we hope to broaden that viewers even additional by introducing youthful generations to the magic of dwell theatre. We are able to’t wait to see how college students embrace their creativity and produce the magic of the wizarding world to life on their college levels. It’s extraordinarily thrilling for us all,” Calendar and Friedman mentioned in a press release to The Hollywood Reporter. 

The West Finish model of Harry Potter and the Cursed Youngster opened in 2016, whereas the Broadway model opened in 2018 — each are nonetheless operating. There are additionally productions enjoying in Hamburg and Tokyo and former runs in Melbourne, Toronto, and San Francisco.

The play, which was written by Jack Thorne, primarily based on an authentic story by J.Ok. Rowling, Thorne and the play’s director, John Tiffany, began on Broadway as a two-part present, which came about throughout two separate performances and had a run time of greater than 5 hours. After the pandemic, the play got here again to Broadway and to its different North America productions, as one present with a operating time of three hours and 30 minutes. 

The present gained six Tony Awards, together with finest play, in addition to 9 Olivier Awards, together with finest new play. The story takes place 19 years after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and follows Harry Potter’s son, Albus, and his friendship with Scorpius, the son of Draco Malfoy. The varsity model, which can have a “new, shortened run time,” shall be developed by Broadway Licensing Group, Thorne, Tiffany, Friedman and Callender, with sign-off from Rowling. 

“Over twenty-five years in the past, the Harry Potter e-book collection impressed a technology of recent readers,” mentioned producer Neil Blair, Rowling’s agent. “Making Harry Potter and the Cursed Youngster, the eighth story within the Harry Potter collection, out there for college productions all over the world will encourage that very same creativity, creativeness, play, and storytelling via the medium of theatre, and we couldn’t be extra thrilled.”

The skilled variations of the play additionally embrace many highly-technical illusions and stage magic to point out a few of the well-known magical parts of the Harry Potter World. The Broadway manufacturing alone was capitalized for as much as $35.5 million, a report for any play on Broadway, along with $33.3 million the manufacturing spent to filter out and redo the Lyric Theatre in a Harry Potter theme. The manufacturing, which has commonly brings in additional than $1 million per week on Broadway, recouped its capitalization prices in late 2022.

Nevertheless, Tiffany mentioned the illusions shall be modified for colleges, according to the storytelling strategies envisioned when the play was first developed.

“After I was growing Harry Potter and the Cursed Youngster with the artistic group, one among our founding ideas was that the magic, illusions and particular results ought to have their roots in storytelling strategies that may very well be achieved when enjoying at residence or at school. This would possibly contain borrowing your instructor’s winter coat to behave out the consequences of taking Polyjuice Potion, or raiding the loft for suitcases to create the Hogwarts Categorical,” Tiffany mentioned. “So opening the world of Harry Potter and the Cursed Youngster as much as colleges is thrilling and feels just like the pure subsequent step in our journey.”

Pilot productions of the college version will happen within the UK and US in Spring 2024, with a worldwide launch for colleges set shortly after. Novice productions are anticipated to roll out at a later date.