NEW HARRY POTTER PLAY WILL BE TWO BOOKS AS WELL

1 THEATRICAL DEBUT ON THE HORIZON

Harry Potter fanatics were already buzzing over the news that a new play set 19 years after the end of the final book will debut in London at the Palace Theatre on Harry’s birthday, July 30.

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1 SCRIPT = 2 BOOKS

That excitement ramped up Wednesday with the announcement that the script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will also be released as a two-part book, at 12:01 a.m., on July 31.

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J. THORNE, NOT J.K. ROWLING

The play was not written by Potter author J.K. Rowling herself. English playwright Jack Thorne wrote the script based on “an original new story” Rowling wrote with Thorne and theatre director John Tiffany.

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EARLY MID-LIFE CRISIS?

In the play, Harry is “an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and father of three school-age children.” In the epilogue to Deathly Hallows, readers learned that Harry had married Ginny Weasley and together they had two sons, Albus and Severus, and a daughter, Lily.

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SPOILER: DARKNESS

In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Albus struggles “with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted,” Wednesday’s announcement said. “As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes darkness comes from unexpected places.”