Nicholas Hoult – currently a fixture of the DCU as Lex Luthor and previously a member of the X-Men movies – has joined yet another franchise: Harry Potter.
Deadline reports that Hoult will play Gilderoy Lockhart in Season 2 of HBO’s Harry Potter series. The character was previously played in the Harry Potter movies by Kenneth Branagh.
Season 2, which will adapt J.K. Rowling’s second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, begins filming in the fall.
Gilderoy Lockhart landed at No. 22 on our list of the Top 25 best Harry Potter characters from the books and movie, where we wrote of him:
“Gilderoy Lockhart is a real charmer. It’s through sheer charisma (and the occasional memory charm) that he established himself in society as one of the most accomplished wizards of all time, without actually performing any of the heroic acts he claims to have done in numerous best-selling books.
“The vain and self-aggrandizing Lockhart’s habit of exaggerating his own deeds would backfire when he was hired as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He would at first relish the position as yet another avenue of self-promotion, but his buffoonery and incompetence soon got the best of Lockhart. His false claims are revealed by Harry Potter and his friends after Lockhart cowardly attempted to flee the school upon being ordered to confront the monster in the Chamber of Secrets.”
Hoult is currently filming the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow. He’ll next be seen in How to Rob a Bank, which opens in theaters on November 13.
Hoult’s other credits include Mad Max: Fury Road, The Great, Warm Bodies, Nosferatu, Renfield, The Menu, Tolkien, About a Boy, and Skins.
Titled Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, the series’ eight-episode first season will debut Christmas 2026 on HBO and will be available to stream exclusively on HBO Max. The series is written and executive produced by Francesca Gardine.
The cast includes Dominic McLaughlin as Harry Potter, Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger, Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley, John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape, Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid, Rory Wilmot as Neville Longbottom, Lox Pratt as Draco Malfoy, Leo Earley as Seamus Finnigan, Elijah Oshin as Dean Thomas, Tristan Harland as Fred Weasley, Gabriel Harland as George Weasley, Ruari Spooner as Percy Weasley, Alessia Leoni as Parvati Patil, Sienna Moosah as Lavender Brown, Finn Stephens as Vincent Crabbe, William Nash as Gregory Goyle, Warwick Davis as Filius Flitwick, and Sirine Saba as Pomona Sprout.
