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The salaries for the three child stars leading the new Harry Potter TV series have reportedly been revealed.
It’s claimed that 12-year-old Dominic McLaughlin, who’ll play the boy wizard, will receive £500,000 for starring in the first season of the forthcoming HBO Max show.
Alastair Stour, 12, and Arabella Stanton, 11, who are playing Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, will receive the same amount, according to The Sun.
A source told the outlet the newcomers, who won the roles over 32,000 children, are “on track to be multi-millionaires before they turn 18” with their “whopping” salaries. Each series will focus on one book in JK Rowling’s best-selling novels, of which there are seven in total. The Independent has contacted HBO Max for comment.
Dominic McLaughlin in ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ (HBO)
Daniel Radcliffe was paid £1m for playing Potter in the first film, which was released in 2001. By film number six – 2009’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – he was getting paid £15m, and made approximately £94 from the film franchise in total.
The first trailer for the new series, adapting Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, has already broken records for HBO since it was released earlier this month. It amassed more than 277 million organic views across platforms in its first 48 hours online.
This made the promo video the most-watched trailer in HBO and streamer HBO Max’s history.
The two-minute trailer for the show, which will be released on in December, also gave a first glimpse at the new stars taking on iconic characters, such as John Lithgow as Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Nick Frost as groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid and Paapa Essiedu as potions teacher – and Harry’s longtime foe – Professor Snape.
Arabella Stanton, Dominic McLaughlin and Alastair Stour will lead new ‘Harry Potter’ show (HBO)
Season two, based on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, is currently being written, and HBO President Casey Bloys told The Times the team is trying to minimise the delay between seasons.
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“Our goal is to not have a huge gap, you know, especially because the kids are growing,” he said. “It’s not going to be an annual; the show is too big and too massive. But they’re writing season two now.”
The show has attracted backlash since it was announced back in 2021. Author Rowling has repeatedly made controversial comments about the transgender community, and some members of the new cast have distanced themselves from her views.
Lithgow recently revealed that he considered quitting the project over the backlash, and clarified that he disagrees with Rowling’s views on transgender rights, while Frost has said that the author is “allowed her opinion and I’m allowed mine – they just don’t align in any way, shape or form”.
Earlier this week, Bloys confirmed that the production has a “serious security team” after Essiedu revealed that he had received racist death threats following his casting as Snape.
Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape in ‘Harry Potter’ (HBO)
“With all actors on any kind of big IP shows – and this is obviously one of those where you’ve got, you know, passionate fans, people with a lot of opinions – it can get scary in places,” Bloys said.
“So for any show like that, we anticipated it and tried to have training, you know, best practices in terms of social media and how to handle it,” he added. “And obviously, we’ve got a serious security team. So unfortunately, it was something that we thought might happen and we just try to be as careful as we can.”