Shocking Harry Potter HBO Series Set Secrets Revealed: ‘It’s Really Tough!’

Slated for a Christmas 2026 release on HBO Max in France, the upcoming Harry Potter series is undoubtedly one of HBO’s most ambitious projects ever, with seven seasons already planned to cover all the original books. It’s a massive production, with an equally massive filming scale, which has caused quite a few headaches for the crew, as revealed by a department head to our colleagues at Vanity Fair.

“It’s Exhausting.”

These are the words of Adriano Goldman, the director of photography for the first season. With extensive experience on large-scale productions such as The Crown and the Star Wars Andor series (one of the most expensive in TV history), this seasoned technician considers the HBO series shoot to be one of the toughest of his career.

The reason: child actors. Or more precisely, the very strict scheduling required by child labor laws in the United Kingdom, which necessitates long breaks and segmented filming to adhere to predefined work hours. This system protects the children and exists in France as well, but it makes the work pace particularly “brutal” for the teams:

“You have to shoot very quickly, and the faster we shoot, the more we sacrifice quality. There’s nothing to be done about it, right? Of course, we have a lot of resources, but it’s exhausting. The filming time with the children is really tight. As a result, the method is very precise. We almost have to pre-shoot all the scenes while they’re in class… It’s really tough; we shoot everything out of order, because of this kind of schedule. The process is therefore very complicated, but I’ve done it before.”

With each child only allowed 1 hour and 30 minutes consecutively on set and a maximum of six takes, the technicians’ day is thus a series of long breaks interspersed with frantic bursts to get as many takes as possible in a hurry. This can exhaust even the most experienced professionals.