UPDATE: Hoult is out at Hogwarts after 13 days. Kit Harington has replaced him as Gilderoy Lockhart, with Hoult exiting over scheduling.
Nicholas Hoult finally got his Hogwarts letter, 25 years late.
The Superman star has officially joined HBO’s Harry Potter series, boarding Season 2 as Gilderoy Lockhart, per Deadline.
Scooper Daniel Richtman had it first, telling his Patreon subscribers this morning that Hoult was in talks for a major role in the series. Hours later, the trades confirmed the deal.
Season 2, adapting Chamber of Secrets, was greenlit in May and starts filming this fall, right as Season 1 hits HBO and HBO Max this Christmas. Jon Brown, a writer on the first season, has been bumped up to co-showrunner alongside Francesca Gardiner.
Lockhart Is A Perfect Fit
Lockhart is the flashiest new role in Chamber of Secrets: the vain celebrity author who charms his way into the Defense Against the Dark Arts job on the strength of a shelf of books about heroics that were never his, with a Memory Charm always at the ready and five Witch Weekly Most Charming Smile Awards on the mantle.
Kenneth Branagh played him in the 2002 movie. Now the part belongs to a guy who has spent the last few years cornering the market on charming villains: Lex Luthor, Renfield’s Dracula sidekick, Nosferatu, The Order, Peter III in The Great.
The connection that made this click was hiding in plain sight. Mark Mylod, who directed Hoult in The Menu, is an executive producer and lead director on Harry Potter.
And Hoult has history here. He auditioned for Harry as a kid and lost the part to Daniel Radcliffe.
Asked on Today last summer about joining the show, Hoult said “I love those stories” while joking he’s now too old to play Harry, per TV Insider. Instead he gets the best adult part in Book 2.
Lex Luthor Finds A Franchise With A Future
Here’s why this hits harder than your average casting announcement.
Hoult is shooting Man of Tomorrow right now as Lex Luthor, warsuit and all, ahead of its July 9, 2027 release. Then he heads straight to Hogwarts.
Because after Man of Tomorrow, DC has nothing on the books for him. Not because Lex is finished, but because DC can’t put anything on the books.
As I reported last week, the merger agreement already hands Paramount veto power over Warner Bros.’ long-term franchise deals. Anything running more than two years past closing goes through David Ellison first.
Per my sources, it’s also open season on James Gunn and Peter Safran, whose contracts expire and will not be renewed once the Paramount deal closes.
Supergirl just left theaters as the lowest-grossing DC movie of all time.
And if the merger dies in court, my insiders say Warner Bros. gets sold off in pieces.
Now put Harry Potter next to all of that: one season per book, seven books, a decade of guaranteed production, and the one WBD franchise David Zaslav and David Ellison actually agree on.
Here’s the kicker. A multi-season Potter commitment is exactly the kind of long-term, key-property deal the merger terms run through Paramount.
Hoult’s deal closing tells you which Warner Bros. franchise the incoming regime is happy to lock talent into. It’s not the one with the S on the chest.
Hoult isn’t even changing employers. He’s just moving from the wing of the company everyone expects to be gutted to the wing everyone agrees gets protected.
The Sorting Hat doesn’t take long with the obvious ones.
