Kit Harington replaces Nicholas Hoult in HBO's Harry Potter series

ByNardine Saad Reporting fromLos Angeles.

Key points

• Oscar-nominated actor Jon Lithgow has been cast as Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore and Nick Frost as gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid.
• Kit Harington has been tapped to join the highly anticipated Harry Potter TV series as the wizarding world's celebrity-turned-Hogwarts instructor Gilderoy Lockhart, HBO confirmed to the BBC.
• Best known for playing Jon Snow for eight seasons in the award-winning series Game of Thrones, Harington additionally appears in the BBC and HBO financial drama Industry.
• Hoult, known for his roles in X-Men, Superman and Mad Max: Fury Road, was confirmed for the role earlier this month.
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is due to premiere on Christmas this year on HBO Max.

Harington is replacing actor Nicholas Hoult who could not film season two of the series due to a scheduling conflict.

Best known for playing Jon Snow for eight seasons in the award-winning series Game of Thrones, Harington additionally appears in the BBC and HBO financial drama Industry. The casting marks the English actor's third collaboration with the American network and streamer.

Season two will adapt the second book in the series by JK Rowling, The Chamber of Secrets. It chronicle's Potter's second year at the magical school.

"Before we begin year two at Hogwarts, there has been a slight change due to schedule: Kit Harington will be stepping into the role of Gilderoy Lockhart, " a story post reads on the official Harry Potter Instagram account.

Notably, the new series adaptation of the best-selling books stars newcomer Dominic McLaughlin as the boy wizard, Alastair Stout as his best friend Ron Weasley and Arabella Stanton as the young witch Hermione Granger.

Emmy-award winning Harington, a lifelong fan of the books, already has some familiarity with his new role: The actor voiced Lockhart in Audible's star-studded Harry Potter: The Full-Cast Audio Editions last year.

Notably, the show could reunite him with director and producer Mark Mylod. This person worked on Game of Thrones and is directing some Harry Potter episodes. Mylod is an executive producer on the new series along with author JK Rowling.

Lockhart was portrayed in the Warner Bros Harry Potter films by Kenneth Branagh, and is a key character in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second book in Rowling's best-selling franchise.

Meanwhile, the vain wizard who authored a number of books on his purported encounters with dark creatures serves as Hogwarts' latest professor for the defence against the dark arts and fancies himself a mentor to Harry in his second year.

Hoult, known for his roles in X-Men, Superman and Mad Max: Fury Road, was confirmed for the role earlier this month. But HBO reportedly had to let the Superman actor out of his accord due to his commitments to projects that conflicted with a change in the series' production schedule, according to Deadline. It first noted Harington's casting. HBO confirmed the reporting to the BBC.

Representatives for Harington and Hoult did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In practice, the HBO series is projected to take 10 years to complete, as producers plan multiple seasons covering each of Rowling's seven books. It the eight blockbuster films were originally based on.

In short, kit Harington replaces Nicholas Hoult in HBO' s Harry Potter series is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.