Theatre News

Harry Potter play to open at Palace Theatre in 2016

The news every Potter fan has been waiting for is finally here

You've read all the books, you've watched all the films, you've probably even been out to Watford to visit the Warner Bros studios, and now you can watch the play.

JK Rowling's boy wizard will hit the stage in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, written by Jack Thorne and directed by John Tiffany at the Palace Theatre, London in Summer 2016.

Thorne and Tiffany worked together on John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In, which ran at the Apollo Theatre last year, and are now set to tell the story of Potter's pre-Hogwarts years in a production co-produced by Rowling along with Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender.

According to the Daily Mail, one of the play's themes will be exploring what happened to Harry’s parents before they were killed by Lord Voldemort.

Author JK Rowling shed a little more light on the project on her twitter this morning:

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 26, 2015

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 26, 2015

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 26, 2015

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 26, 2015

John Tiffany's other directing credits include Once, Black Watch and The Glass Menagerie on Broadway. Jack Thorne's other plays include Bunny, When You Cure Me and an adaptation of Friedrich Duerrenmatt's The Physicists.

The Harry Potter series, comprising of seven books, has sold over 450 million copies since the first one – Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone – was released in 1997.