If we were to ever get a Harry Potter prequel movie based on a young Severus Snape, there would only be one actor who could do the character justice: Adam Driver.
The Prequels
Despite J.K. Rowling’s less-than-stellar reputation among fans after she posted a couple of tweets that brought the axe down on her head, many fans of her popular series Harry Potter still want more content. While the Fantastic Beasts and Hogwarts Legacy (a delayed open-world RPG in which players will be able to explore the world of Harry Potter through their own eyes rather than the eyes of the story’s main protagonist) are both prequels to the original story told by Rowling and give us insight into the world of Harry Potter before he became a part of it, audiences are still hoping for a movie that will centre around other fan-favourite characters, most notably Severus Snape.
There has been a lot of back and forth among fans about who could play the potions professor, and many eyes have wandered over to a different fandom in their search.
Adam Driver Could Play a Young Severus Snape
The Slytherin Potions Master has been a favourite among fans since the late Alan Rickman first portrayed him on screen. While it would be incredibly difficult for Harry Potter fans to see the character being played by anyone else, they seem to have settled on someone who looks as close to a young Alan Rickman as they could get it: the Star Wars actor Adam Driver (also known for his brilliant performance in Marriage Story alongside Scarlett Johansson).
Adam Driver’s character Kylo Ren (originally Ben Solo) has a similar character arch to Severus Snape. Both of them got involved in their universe’s evil cult at a young age and made some deplorable choices along the way. Both returned to the light (for love) and helped the main protagonist defeat the main antagonist, dying in the process. His own similarities to Rickman are what put him on the top of the list to play a young Snape.
He’s a very talented actor, so there’s no doubt that he’d be able to play Snape. However, there is the question of whether or not he would be too old to play a younger version of the Potions Professor. With Adam Driver now being 38, the same age that Snape died, he wouldn’t really be able to play a ‘young’ Snape. Still, given that Rickman was 55 when he played the Harry Potter character, and the movies are rather loose with character’s ages, the franchise could probably get away with it.
The Severus Snape Movie
Many fans would love to see Snape’s progression from a student at Hogwarts to Death Eater and a double agent from his perspective directly in a Harry Potter prequel movie rather than through flashbacks.
Like Harry Potter, Snape also had to deal with an abusive household as a child, and Hogwarts (and his friendship with Lily) became his saving grace. Fans would be able to watch as the need to fit in and be accepted by those in his house slowly became the most important thing to him. In his desperate need for approval, we’d see him destroy any chance he might have had with Lily by betraying her trust completely and calling her a Mudblood (which is essentially a slur in the Wizarding World), then watch him spiral further as he is unable to fix his mistake before Lily is lost to him forever (in more ways than one).
The similarities between Snape and Harry’s stories and fans’ love for the character make him the perfect candidate for a prequel. Now, all that’s left is to convince Warner Bros. to greenlight the movie and Adam Driver to play Severus Snape.
How would you feel about a Harry Potter prequel focused on Adam Driver as Severus Snape?
I would absolutely love a Snape movie with Adam Driver as the main character. But I am realistic enough to realise that we will probably never get that.