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EXCLUSIVE: A beloved actor is poised to play a beloved Harry Potter character. Six-time Emmy winner John Lithgow is in final negotiations to portray Professor Albus Dumbledore in HBO‘s high-profile series adaptation of the hugely popular fantasy books, sources tell Deadline.
HBO declined to comment. “We appreciate that such a high-profile series will draw a lot of rumor and speculation,” the network said in a statement. “As we make our way through pre-production, we will only confirm details as we finalize deals.”
The Harry Potter series, designed to run over a decade, comes from writer/showrunner Francesca Gardiner and director/executive producer Mark Mylod. Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, at the time of the original announcement called the show a “faithful adaptation” of J.K. Rowling’s novels which will “dive deep into each of the iconic books.”
Powerful wizard Dumbledore is the headmaster of the Hogwarts wizarding school and the leader of the Order of the Phoenix whose goal is fighting the Dark wizard Lord Voldemort.
Dumbledore was portrayed by the late Richard Harris and Michael Gambon in the Harry Potter movie franchise. Jude Law played a younger version of the character in the Fantastic Beasts prequel films.
While all of them are British or Irish and Lithgow is American, he has played British characters. He won the most recent of his six Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Winston Churchill on The Crown has been playing Roald Dahl on stage in London.
The Harry Potter TV series, which will be filmed at Warner Bros Studios Leavesden where the movies were shot, is slated to debut on HBO in late 2026 or early 2027.
Lithgow is on track to be be the first actor set for a project whose casting has attracted enormous interest. The rumor mill had been going into overdrive for months with speculation on who would play the books’ most iconic characters. Those rumored have ranged from Paapa Essiedu for Potions Master Snape and Sharon Horgan and Lesley Manville for Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall to Brett Goldstein for Hogwarts’ gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid and even Oscar winner Cillian Murphy for Lord Voldemort, with Ralph Fiennes, who played the role in the films, backing the idea.
Additionally, some 32,000 kids sent audition tapes for the lead roles of Harry, Hermione and Ron, with the selection progressing.
Lithgow, a two-time Oscar nominee, co-stars in current Oscar contender Conclave. He also headlines the indie Jimpa, which just premiered at Sundance, and stars opposite Geoffrey Rush in the upcoming The Rule of Jenny Pen. On TV, Lithgow was recently a series regular on FX’s The Old Man and reprised his Emmy-winning Trinity role on Showtime’s Dexter: New Blood. He also is attached to narrate a potential Trinity Killer prequel series, now in the works.
A two-time Tony winner, Lithgow recently ended a sold-out run of Giant at London’s Royal Court Theatre, playing Roald Dahl. The production will soon transfer to the Harold Pinter theatre in the West End. Lithgow is currently narrating New York City Ballet’s Carnival of the Animals. He wrote the narration in 2003, drawing on his illustrated children’s book of the same name. Lithgow is repped by UTA, Anonymous Content, Hansen Jacobson Teller and Viewpoint.
