Colin Callender, the producer who will be bringing to life the Harry Potter pre-Hogwarts play with Sonia Friedman, with J.K. Rowling's approval and assistance, recently and for the first time spoke about the endeavour with Deadline. Callender chatted about how far along he and his team are with the play, Rowling's involvement, and whether the production may come to Broadway or be adapted to the big screen.

DEADLINE: You also have a Harry Potter play in the works in the UK.
CALLENDER: Sonia Friedman, the English producer, and I are developing together with J. K. Rowling. It’s not going to be a play based on the books per se; it will obviously be about Harry but it’s a new story from J. K. Rowling that hasn’t been told before and it will sort of explore the emotional life of Harry in a way that it’ll be different from what was in fact in the books or in the films.

Rowling is notoriously protective of her work and her characters. How did you convince her to do another chapter of the Harry Potter franchise with you?
CALLENDER: She had been approached by a lot of people. They had talked about doing big event shows and musicals and so on and so forth. When Sonia and I approached her it seemed as though it was the first time someone had really talked to her about how one could be an intimate drama on the stage that would explore a side of Harry that hadn’t been seen before. And I think she responded to the possibilities of what could be done on stage and she has embraced it fully and is working with us. It’s very exciting.

How involved is she in the process?
CALLENDER: Well, we’re right at the beginning of the process, but she is centrally involved.

Is there already interest from Broadway?
CALLENDER: There’s no writer or director attached yet so it’s too early to be talking about theaters and so on.

What about a screen adaptation?
CALLENDER: I don’t know. That’s certainly not the intent at the moment. It is to create a play that uniquely takes advantage of the intimacy and the immediacy of what you can do with a play with a live audience. So it’s not going to be a big special effects play. It’s an intimate personal drama about the boy who lived under the stairs.

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Casey O