Kenny and Keith Lucas want to bring a black, stoner, animated version of ‘Harry Potter’ to a screen near you.<\/b>
\nWhether it\u2019s drawing fanart of a black Hermione or tweeting about #BlackHogwarts, non-white Muggles find ways to carve out spaces in the overwhelmingly white world of Harry Potter. And on Thursday, fans of color gleefully used the #BlackHogwarts hashtag to imagine what J. K. Rowling\u2019s Wizarding World would look like with more black characters.
\u201cConversation about Voldemort at the nearest #BlackHogwarts barbershop,\u201d wrote Twitter user Patrick Lewis. \u00ab\u00a0His Mama named him Tom, Imma call him Tom!\u00a0\u00bb
Others shared black actor names for their dream cast in a #BlackHogwarts film adaptation. One user suggested Donald Glover as Harry Potter, Morgan Freeman as Albus Dumbledore and Samuel L. Jackson as Hagrid. Even Rowling got involved. \u201cSeeing them and loving them,\u201d the author wrote when a fan asked if she\u2019d seen the tweets.
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But there was one #BlackHogwarts tweet that promised more than just fantasy: \u00ab\u00a0We actually wrote an animated show where we get stuck in a magical HBCU. A bunch of TV networks passed on it. I thought the script was dope. They all basically said it was \u2018too weird\u2019 and no one would watch it. 99 percent of the executives were white. Hollywood!\u201d
The tweet came from Keith and Kenny Lucas, the creators of the animated Fox comedy Lucas Bros. Moving Co. The stoner comedy, starring animated versions of the identical twin brothers, was canceled in 2015 after two seasons. The brothers bounced back in 2017 with their first stand-up comedy special, On Drugs, on Netflix.
But three years ago, the Lucas Brothers worked on a project with writer Nick Weidenfeld that never got off the ground: Another World. And this project looked very similar to the picture #BlackHogwarts was painting.
\u201cIt was the Lucas Bros in a magical universe like Harry Potter, but for a historically black college or university.\u201d Keith Lucas told Newsweek on Friday. The idea, he said, came from an unaired episode of Lucas Bros. Moving Co he and his brother wrote three years ago. The show would star the Lucas brothers as stoner-wizard students who, like Harry Potter, are destined for greatness\u2014unlike the Boy Who Lived, though, they had no desire to be great. \u201cWe prefer to be mediocre wizards,\u201d Lucas laughed.
The Lucas Brothers in their 2017 Netflix comedy special, \u00ab\u00a0On Drugs.\u00a0\u00bb Netflix
For the supporting roles, the brothers had voice actors in mind while writing: Jerrod Carmichael as a militant black professor named the Great Rodini, Eric Andre as the headmaster, Tiffany Haddish as a fellow student, pro-wrestler Steve Austin as the \u201cVoldemort\/Trump\u201d president of the magical world and comedian Eddie Griffin as Eddie Griffindoor, \u201can anthropomorphic door that sounds who dreams of being a stand-up comedian, and not just a door.\u201d Unfortunately, the pitch never got an executive\u2019s stamp of approval.
\u201cEverybody rejected it,\u201d Lucas said. \u201cWe basically heard that no one would want to watch the show.\u201d
But social media said otherwise. The Lucas\u2019s #BlackHogwarts tweet garnered nearly 10,000 retweets in just 24 hours. \u201cMAKE. THIS. NOW,\u201d replied one Twitter user. \u201cSeriously, someone make this happen,\u201d wrote another.
\u201cAfter seeing that hashtag go viral, we realized there\u2019s a big appetite out there,\u201d Lucas said, adding that he and his brother were overwhelmed by the support for the show. \u201cBlack people love Harry Potter, we love magic, we love all of these things.\u201d
Lucas said he \u201cabsolutely\u201d intends to re-pitch Another World to Netflix and other networks now that the support for the show is clear.
\u201cI\u2019m curious to see how executives will respond when they see there is actually a market out there,\u201d he said. \u201cWe’ve all been influenced by J. K. Rowling’s masterpiece and I think it’s absolutely time for black folks\u2014and people of color in general\u2014to get some representation in the magical universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

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