Stephen King's Harry Potter: The Fan-Made Concept That's Too Weird To Be Real
When it comes to accomplished fiction writers, you don't get much more prodigious than Stephen King. So iconic is his work that the YouTube channel Yellow Medusa created an artificial intelligence-driven video that hypothesizes how the "Harry Potter" films would look like if King — and not J.K. Rowling — created the franchise. This is one of several videos where the channel reimagines the "Harry Potter" movies if they were directed or written by other famous creators.
The video starts with Harry wearing a yellow raincoat, looking very much like Georgie Denbrough, a victim of Pennywise in King's novel "It." The evil clown appears without a nose, seemingly a stand-in for Voldemort as he haunts Harry's dreams — which may be more than just nightmares. Hagrid (Dick Hallorann from "The Shining") then tells the young protagonist, "You shine, Harry. And people who shine can sometimes see things that are going to happen." In addition to that "The Shining" reference, Dobby the house-elf is introduced with a twist on Jack Torrance's maniacal "Here's Johnny!" and the twins appear as Fred and George Weasley.
Hermione shows up to correct Harry's grammar — "It's not the Losers' Club, Harry. It's the Club of Losers" — and while that line contains another "It" reference, she's depicted as Charlie McGee, the pyrokinetic character in "Firestarter." Harry's godfather, Sirius, is cast as the dog from "Cujo," and he quotes King's novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption," saying, "Fear can hold you prisoner, Harry, but hope can set you free." Draco Malfoy also makes an appearance, representing "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" and threatening, "The wizarding world has teeth."
Finally, Dumbledore shows up looking like Morgan Freeman's "Shawshank Redemption" character Ellis Boyd Redding, asking Harry if he knows what is real.
Fans have long been reimagining Harry Potter as a Stephen King project
Yellow Medusa's video runs for one minute and 51 seconds and is quite comprehensive in terms of its references. But their effort is far from the first time that fans shared their ideas for a theoretical "Harry Potter" universe with Stephen King in charge.
In one of multiple Reddit threads centered on the topic, u/MrTomDawson posited that if King wrote the "Harry Potter" books, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry would be located in his home state of Maine, much as it is in the Yellow Medusa clip. Outside of that detail, there were users such as u/hauteburrito who offered darker, grittier, and arguably more realistic takes on J.K. Rowling's novels. "There would be a lot more focus on the Dursleys abusing Harry, the dementors would feature much more prominently, and Harry would actually deal with some scary PTSD s*** instead of just the 'monster in his chest' roaring about Ginny Weasley or whatever," they wrote.
While another thread also largely included predictions of a "Harry Potter" franchise with more adult scenarios under King's watch (not to mention Hogwarts being in Maine), one Redditor who posted there had an interesting take on how the horror legend would rewrite the bullies from Rowling's books. "Draco, Crabbe, and Vincent would be you typical Greaser Psychopaths, maybe even Dudley too," the now-deleted user wrote, seemingly referencing the likes of Henry Bowers and his gang from "It" and the undead killers from King's short story "Sometimes They Come Back."