Gilderoy Lockhart’s casting didn’t survive the summer.
Kit Harington is taking over the role in Season 2 of HBO’s Harry Potter, replacing Nicholas Hoult, per Deadline.
Hoult’s exit comes down to scheduling.
HBO built his deal around two pre-existing Hoult projects, but when the Lockhart scenes shifted within the Season 2 production schedule, the workaround fell apart and Hoult was let out of his deal.
Deadline doesn’t name the two projects, but Hoult’s calendar isn’t a mystery.
He’s on the Man of Tomorrow set right now as Lex Luthor ahead of its July 9, 2027 release, and How to Rob a Bank hits theaters in November.
Jon Snow Already Played Lockhart
Here’s the key detail that makes this recasting easier than most: Harington has already played the part.
He voiced Lockhart in last year’s star-studded Harry Potter full-cast audiobooks from Audible, and grew up a fan of the books, the same age as Harry when the first novel dropped.
“I think there’s a little bit of Gilderoy Lockhart in all of us,” Harington said in an Audible featurette at the time.
It also keeps the role in the HBO family. Harington led all eight seasons of Game of Thrones as Jon Snow and is currently on Industry, making Harry Potter his third series for the network.
He steps into the flashiest role in Chamber of Secrets: the vain celebrity fraud who talks his way into the Defense Against the Dark Arts job, played by Kenneth Branagh in the 2002 movie.
Season 2 starts filming this fall, with Season 1 premiering this Christmas on HBO Max.
The DC Schedule Giveth And Taketh Away
Two weeks ago, Hoult booked Lockhart and it looked like Lex Luthor had lined up his next franchise. The deal lasted 13 days.
And note what kept him out of Hogwarts: the commitments already on his calendar, topped by the one guaranteed production DC has left on the books.
Worth remembering what a Man of Tomorrow commitment looks like right now. Frank Grillo gave the movie an emotional on-camera goodbye in May, then got called back to Atlanta seven weeks later to “finish” it.
Per my sources, Gunn is planning his farewell tour and shooting the film Marvel-style off a Frankensteined script, bolting on characters and new material mid-production. On a movie like that, an actor’s wrap date is a suggestion.
That could be exactly where Hoult found himself: the Lockhart scenes moved, HBO needed hard dates, and hard dates are the one thing a Gunn set can’t hand out right now.
As I’ve reported, nothing long-term gets signed at DC right now without Paramount’s blessing, so Man of Tomorrow remains the last DC entry on Hoult’s schedule. The difference is that now his dance card after it is open again.
Somewhere, Lockhart is already taking credit for how smoothly the recasting went.
