Animated Movie 'Troll: The Rise Of Harry Potter Jr.' Is Not A Harry Potter Sequel

Not long after Chris Columbus was talking about a desire to return to the wizarding world of Harry Potter with a sequel taking place after The Deathly Hallows, a press release has announced a new animated film called Troll: The Rise of Harry Potter, Jr. But it has nothing to do with the Harry Potter most are familiar with today.

Instead, this new project is a reprisal of the 1986 cult classic film Troll, with original director and writer John Carl Buechler heading back to his fantasy world in the format of a 3D animated feature film. So what's with the Harry Potter Jr movie angle? Find out after the jump!

Eleven years before J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book was published, the film Troll focused on the Potter family, including the patriarch Harry Potter and his son Harry Potter Jr. So the new movie is merely using the names of characters that existed before the popular book series made Harry Potter a household name for very different reasons. And the press release is very smart to point that out:

The reprise of "TROLL: The Rise of Harry Potter, Jr." has not been prepared, approved or licensed by any entity that created or produced the J.K Rowling series of Harry Potter books or the Warner Bros. series of Harry Potter motion pictures. TROLL: the Movie LLC is not affiliated with J.K.Rowling or Warner Bros nor has this motion picture been endorsed or authorized by J.K.Rowling or Warner Bros. The characters "Harry Potter" and "Harry Potter, Jr." depicted in TROLL are not related to, or inspired by, the book and film characters of J.K.Rowling and Warner Bros.

Harry Potter and Harry Potter, Jr. and his family were characters in the 1986 motion picture "TROLL" which was independently created and distributed 11 years before J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book was written and published.

However, you can be sure that SC Films International is well aware that using the name Harry Potter Jr. in the title will get clueless kids, and maybe even adults, to turn their head and see what this animated movie is all about. So it's sneaky, but not entirely despicable.

Anyway, the new feature will revisit the world of the original 1986 film where a wicked, magical troll wizard envisages taking over the world. Now only Harry Potter, Jr., with the help of a magical witch, can save the planet from the clutches of the troll wizard and his evil force.

Patricia Arquette (Boyhood) has signed for the voice role of the witch while child actor Baxter Bartlett has the role of Harry Potter Jr. The rest of the cast has yet to be determined (don't expect Julia Louis-Dreyfus to get anywhere near Troll again), but the hope is to follow-up with several sequels. That's pretty ambitious, but I don't know if a project like this will be successful enough to warrant more movies.

The press release indicates that the plan is for the film to arrives sometime in early 2017, but a TV series will actually arrive before that with hopes of it arriving sometime in 2016. Along with that, there are talks with the Harbin 'Window to Eurasia' Theme Park in Northern China for a Troll-themed venue. This all seems like a very odd development.

Troll is such a strange fantasy property, with a sequel that is largely considered to be the worst film ever made, complete with a documentary about the production called Best Worst Movie (see below for correction regarding this reference). But with all the revivals, remakes and reboots happening in entertainment today, this was bound to happen sooner or later.EDIT: As someone who is not overly familiar with the Troll franchise, I assumed that Troll 2 was a sequel to Troll from 1986, but this is not the case. Carry on.

Anyone out there interested in Troll: The Rise of Harry Potter Jr.?