LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:
"Harry Potter" fans have got it good lately. It seems like every week there's another "Harry Potter" production. There's an HBO TV show in the works. There are video games, theme parks. But if you're more of an audiobook person, you'll know the big release actually happened a few weeks ago. Audible dropped the first in its series of "Harry Potter" audiobooks with a full-cast recording. Here to tell us more about it is NPR's book correspondent Andrew Limbong. Hey, Andrew.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Hey, Lauren.
FRAYER: So set the stage for us. What do we need to know about this "Harry Potter" audiobook?
LIMBONG: Generally speaking - right? - audiobooks consist of one narrator reading the entire book, right? Maybe sometimes they'll pitch their voices up or down to do different characters and stuff. This is a full-cast recording, and what that means is you've got one narrator - in this case, it's actor Cush Jumbo - but then you also have different actors voicing different characters.
Now, that's not a new concept, but Audible, which is the Amazon-owned audiobook and podcast company - they're really pulling out all of the stops for this production. They've got some decently famous people in it. I mean, you got Riz Ahmed playing Snape, Matthew Macfadyen from HBO's "Succession" and "Pride and Prejudice." They've got him as Voldemort. Speaking of "Pride and Prejudice," Keira Knightley's going to show up as a voice in a later book.
FRAYER: Oh, star-studded. So you've got a clip for us.
LIMBONG: Yeah. So yeah, like you mentioned, Audible recently released the first book in the series, "The Sorcerer's Stone." And I just want to give folks a bit of a setup. Lauren, are you a big "Harry Potter" fan?
FRAYER: I have to admit...
LIMBONG: Oh, oh.
FRAYER: ...I read 1 1/2 books.
LIMBONG: OK.
FRAYER: And I have not seen any of the movies. But I'm intrigued. Audiobooks might be what hooks me.
LIMBONG: All right. Cool. I'll give you the setup. So Harry is just a wizard, right (laughter)?
FRAYER: I got that.
LIMBONG: Yeah. OK. Cool.
FRAYER: I know that much.
LIMBONG: All right. And so this is the scene after all the kids are sorted in their wizard houses, and Harry hears a speech from the headmaster, who is voiced by Hugh Laurie.
(SOUNDBITE OF AUDIOBOOK, "HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE")
CUSH JUMBO: (As narrator) At last, the puddings too disappeared.
(SOUNDBITE OF DISHES CLATTERING)
JUMBO: (As narrator) And Professor Dumbledore got to his feet again. The hall fell silent.
HUGH LAURIE: (As Albus Dumbledore) Ahem. Just a few more words, now we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices to give you.
LIMBONG: I don't know if you caught that little, like, whoosh and the ahem there, but this thing is more than just the voice actors reading the lines. There's an original orchestral score, and there's a lot of fancy-schmancy sound design. I don't know if this is going to come through on the radio, but, Lauren, if you want to turn your headphones up a bit, I'm going to play you a bit more action-packed scene to give you a sense of what's going on. This is the scene where they're playing quidditch, which is essentially, like, wizard rugby on flying broomsticks.
(SOUNDBITE OF AUDIOBOOK, "HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE")
JUMBO: (As narrator) Harry saw it.
(SOUNDBITE OF WIND RUSHING)
JUMBO: (As narrator) In a great rush of excitement, he dived downwards after the streak of gold.
(SOUNDBITE OF WIND RUSHING)
JUMBO: (As narrator) Slytherin seeker Terence Higgs had seen it too. Neck and neck, they hurtled towards the snitch.
FRAYER: Wow. So this is like a movie. I mean, this is, like, full tracks, like, sounds. This is not somebody in a recording studio reading a book. This is really different from the classical-style audiobook.
LIMBONG: Yeah. I mean, just for comparison's sake - right? - here's what the old Jim Dale audiobook sounds like.
(SOUNDBITE OF AUDIOBOOK, "HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE")
JIM DALE: (As narrator) Chapter 1, The Boy Who Lived.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DALE: (As narrator) Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number 4 Privet Drive were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
FRAYER: And that sounds perfectly normal, thank you very much.
LIMBONG: (Laughter)
FRAYER: But you've got something different now.
LIMBONG: Yeah. That just sounds like a guy reading a book to you, right? You know, I think some folks might actually prefer that style versus the full cast recording with all of its, like, whizbang energy.
FRAYER: Oh, I like the whizbang. The full-cast recording of the second book is set to come out next month with the rest of the books scheduled to come out through 2026. What does this say, Andrew, about the audiobook industry? Is it changing?
LIMBONG: I mean, I think it's just a further indication that audiobooks are popping off, right? I mean, from my reporting, audiobooks is an industry that's been growing steadily for, like, about a decade now. And just, you know, anecdotally, I'm running into lots more people who are just telling me, like, oh, I listened to that on audiobook instead of, like, reading, reading it.
Honestly, though, I think it says more about the "Harry Potter" franchise and how it still stands strong as a moneymaking enterprise all these years on, right? Like, after an extremely successful movie franchise, they can, like you said, retell essentially the same story on TV for HBO, and then they're retelling the same story on audiobook. People are very much - you aside - still very much into "Harry Potter."
FRAYER: This is going to do it for me. I'm going to get into the audiobooks. Yeah. A good story's a good story. That was NPR's Andrew Limbong. Thank you, Andrew.
LIMBONG: Thanks, Lauren.
FRAYER: And just a heads up, Amazon is a financial supporter of NPR and pays to distribute some of our content.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN WILLIAMS' "HEDWIG'S THEME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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