Harry Potter’s Two Darkest Films Rule Streaming This Spooky Season

Halloween is technically in the rearview, but apparently the real October winners showed up wearing robes and carrying wands. Harry Potter has crept back up the charts, and not for butterbeer nostalgia alone. The first two films are spiking on streaming right now, and yeah, those early entries are way creepier than we tend to remember.

Potter is running the table on HBO right now

According to HBO's Top 10 movies list dated November 3, tracked by FlixPatrol, the first two films — Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — are leading the pack. While everyone else is queuing up slashers and haunted dolls, a lot of folks are clearly in the mood for cozy blankets and mild childhood trauma.

Those first two movies? Secretly scary

Before the series went full bleak in the later films, the Chris Columbus entries were already balancing warm-and-fuzzy with genuinely unsettling. If it has been a minute since you revisited them, here is a quick refresher on why they still work as seasonal chillers:

• Philosopher's Stone starts like a hug and ends like a horror short. That troll in the girls bathroom is pure nightmare fuel, the Forbidden Forest detention is pitch-black creepy, and the hooded figure slurping unicorn blood is one of the franchise's eeriest images.
• Fluffy, the not-at-all-cuddly three-headed dog, is a straight-up monster, and the flying keys sequence plays like a fantasy escape room with an attitude.
• Then there is the reveal that Voldemort is literally riding shotgun on the back of Professor Quirrell's head. If you say you did not flinch when the turban came off, I do not believe you.
• Chamber of Secrets leans harder into the haunted-school vibe: disembodied whispers, students turning up petrified, and a giant unseen serpent slithering under the castle. The Basilisk is nightmare material even before the fangs come out.
• Neville gets a reprieve here, but Nearly Headless Nick frozen mid-grin is the kind of image that sticks with you. The Tom Riddle diary scenes are quietly menacing too — ink bleeding into secrets, Voldemort whispering through the margins — and the final face-off in the Chamber is basically creature-feature territory.

So when do we get the new TV series?

If you have been waiting for a proper small-screen return to Hogwarts, there is finally a timeline. HBO has locked the Harry Potter series for 2027 — later than the earlier late-2026 chatter, but official now. The Verge reported the new window, and Warner Bros. Discovery says the project is moving along.

Production kicked off in the UK in July 2025. WBD keeps emphasizing that this one is sticking closer to the books than the films had room to:

"A faithful adaptation of the beloved Harry Potter books."

And if you are worried about your annual rewatch, the original movies are still set to live on HBO Max alongside the series.

As for the new trio stepping into some massive shoes: Dominic McLaughlin is your new Harry. Alastair Stout is taking on Ron. Arabella Stanton is playing Hermione. The casting was already making the rounds online as of May 27, 2025, complete with a social drop naming all three — an extremely 2025 way to introduce the next generation of Hogwarts leads.

Bottom line: the early films still know how to give you chills, and the TV reboot is finally on the calendar. Until 2027, the first two movies are clearly doing just fine keeping the lights on — and maybe keeping a few on at night.