HBO's Harry Potter series cast Jasper Talbot as James Potter, Hannah Chinn as Lily Potter, and Harry Gilby as Charlie Weasley this morning, according to Deadline. The parents die before the first episode ends, and the announcement does not mention this.
The mechanism is the fun part. The franchise is now so deep in legacy territory that the casting news is for roles the audience has already seen die. James and Lily Potter are the only characters in the series defined entirely by their death in the first film, and the studio just cast them. That is not a casting announcement. That is a pre-announced funeral with a headshot.
The whole point of the parents is that they are already gone. Every new image of them is a fresh layer of grief the fandom is being asked to pre-buy. The PR machine knows this, which is why the announcement leads with the faces and leaves out the part where they are dead by act two. The grief is the product, and the product is the casting.
Meanwhile the child Harry is Dominic McLaughlin, cast months ago, and the rest of the ensemble is already in place. The only people still being cast are the dead. When a franchise is casting the dead, the only thing left to sell is the funeral.
YOUR TURN: If you cast the dead, do you have to cast the funeral too, or does the franchise trust you to improvise the grief?
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