Jack Thorne

Jack Thorne is a British playwright and screenwriter known for writing across theater, film and television with equal ease. He wrote the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, developed from a story he created with J.K. Rowling and director John Tiffany, which continues the Harry Potter story years after the books end and won the Tony Award for best play. Thorne is also known for television dramas and adaptations, bringing the same close attention to character to every medium he works in.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is built on a large scale, using stagecraft, illusion and quick scene changes to tell a story that moves across time and place the way the Harry Potter books do, but as a play rather than a musical, driven by dialogue and family drama more than songs. Thorne's writing leans toward emotionally direct, sometimes difficult subject matter, parents and children who struggle to understand each other, grief, and the weight of a legacy, handled with warmth rather than cynicism. The play is staged in two parts seen on the same day or on consecutive evenings, giving it a total running time of several hours, considerably longer than a typical night at the theater. Expect elaborate technical stagecraft, a story that rewards familiarity with the Harry Potter books though it does not strictly require it, and a tone that takes its young characters and their problems seriously.

Jack Thorne was born in 1978 in Bristol, England, and began his writing career in television, contributing to British dramas including Skins and This Is England before moving into film and theater. He built a reputation for handling difficult, emotionally honest subjects with care, including disability, mental health and grief, across a wide range of projects.

His best-known stage work, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, grew out of a story he developed with J.K. Rowling and director John Tiffany, extending the Harry Potter series nineteen years after the books end. The play opened in London's West End in 2016 and on Broadway in 2018, where it won the Tony Award for Best Play, and has since been staged around the world.

Thorne continues to write for stage, film and television, including the miniseries adaptation of His Dark Materials and the screenplay for Enola Holmes, moving fluidly between mediums while keeping character and emotional honesty at the center of his work.