Rupert Grint will join Harry Potter again, this time on Broadway

NEW YORK – Rupert Grint, who starred as Ron Weasley in all eight Harry Potter films, will play the same role on Broadway, starting early 2027.

Grint will join the cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a sequel to the novels and films that has been running on Broadway since 2018.

Grint plans to start performances on Feb 2, and has committed to a 17-week run, through May 30.

The actor was just 11 years old when he landed the film role, playing one of Harry’s two closest friends. He is now 38, and his character is a husband and a father.

“I can’t wait to meet him again in this stage of life,” Grint said in a statement. “There is something so full-circle and so special about stepping back into Ron’s shoes now when we are both fathers; it is somehow both very familiar and completely new.”

Grint, who since the Harry Potter movies has worked primarily in film and television, has one previous Broadway credit: in 2014, he was part of the cast for a hit revival of Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play.

Grint’s Cursed Child stint will begin a month after the end of a 14-month run in the show by Tom Felton, who as a child played the bullying Draco Malfoy in the films, and who now plays that character, with an improved personality, as an adult onstage. (The play is set 19 years after the main action of the final novel.)

Felton’s tenure has provided a remarkable boost to the play, which had stalled at the box office before his casting.

Weekly grosses doubled upon Felton’s arrival in November, and have remained elevated – they dip noticeably during his occasional absences for vacations or for work on other projects.

And the scene at the stage door has become considerably more crowded, reflecting the enthusiasm of the enormous Harry Potter fan base.

Grint is an even bigger star in the Harry Potter cosmos, because he played one of the core three characters in the films, so it seems likely that his run will also prove to be a financial boon for the show, which, at the time of its opening, was the costliest non-musical play ever to open on Broadway.

The roles taken on by Felton and Grint, although key to the films, are less central in the play, which focuses on the next generation of wizards.

But fans clearly experience a nostalgic rush from seeing actors they first encountered as children grown up alongside their characters.

The play began its life in 2016 in London’s West End, with a two-part production that is still running. The Broadway run began as a two-part show, but after the coronavirus pandemic it was streamlined to one part, and then in 2024 that single part was further trimmed to reduce its running time (and running costs).

The show – written by Jack Thorne, directed by John Tiffany and produced by Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender – won six Tony Awards, including for best play.

The New York production has sold 4.1 million tickets and grossed US$532 million (S$676.1 million), more than any other non-musical play in Broadway history.

In addition to London (which is switching to the one-part production in October) and New York, there are currently productions in Tokyo and the Netherlands and a touring production in North America.

Globally, the show has sold 14 million tickets. NYTIMES