If you’ve been on social media this week, you might have come across some chat about a Pixar Harry Potter movie. But however excited you might be about the animation maestros bringing their unique art style to the Wizarding World, we have to pour some cold water on your dreams. It’s not happening.
This all started, as so many viral trends do, with a video on TikTok. One user shared a mocked-up video in which they pretended to discover a new Harry Potter film on Disney Plus, apparently made in the style of Pixar movies. The clip came complete with a trailer for the movie, showing Harry Potter characters like Hagrid and Hedwig in the Pixar style.
Plenty of fans were fooled by the trailer and commented that they had raced to see if they could find the new movies on Disney Plus. “I’ve never opened Disney+ this fast and was crushed it wasn’t real,” said one comment, while another explained that they “literally spent 10 minutes looking for it”.
However, as many eventually worked out, this whole thing was designed using AI. Tony Aube, who posted the video, works with AI in Silicon Valley and explained in a follow-up clip that he spent just four hours putting together the fake trailer.
It’s not even the only collision between Harry Potter, Pixar, and AI in recent weeks, with a Spanish fan account on Instagram sharing AI-generated posters for the Potter movies. You can see one of those on the left, with a still from Aube’s video on the right.
Of course, this is all a bit sad. Pixar is one of the most uniquely artistic studios in Hollywood, bringing distinct flair and heart to each of its individual stories. To boil the whole thing down to a house style for a computer program to mimic neglects to appreciate the enormous differences between something like Elemental or Turning Red and the Toy Story movies.
With the Harry Potter TV series release date on the horizon, many devotees of Hogwarts are preparing for a new Harry Potter cast and a future that looks very different from the one before. And while it would be fascinating to see what Pixar might do in the Wizarding World, these AI creations don’t even scratch the surface.
In the unlikely event that Disney and Warner Bros. ever do choose to collaborate for a spin on Harry Potter, it could be one of the best movies we’ve ever seen. After all, both Pixar and Potter radiate magic, so the results would be pure sorcery.
But we’d have to go through months and years of artistry before there was anything new on Disney Plus, rather than a few hours plugging prompts into a computer. Even Voldemort deserves better than that.
For more on AI in Hollywood, find out what happened when we asked an AI to write a Jon Snow sequel and take a look at this terrible attempt at what Wes Anderson’s Dune would look like.
Alternatively, explore the real thing and find about the future projects we’ll have to add to our Harry Potter movies in order guide. They include the Fantastic Beasts 4 release date and the Cursed Child release date.
The creator of the Harry Potter series, JK Rowling, has made a number of transphobic remarks on social media in recent years. If you’d like to learn more about transgender equality or lend your support, here are two charities we encourage you to visit: the National Center for Transgender Equality in the US, and Mermaids in the UK.