More “Harry Potter” movies will not be a fantasy. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav wondered Thursday if the corporate “can do something” more with the franchise with controversial “Harry Potter” writer J.K. Rowling.
Variety reported that in Thursday’s earnings call, Zaslav was asked how content might be “different” under Warner Bros. Discovery in comparison with the AT&T-run WarnerMedia era. Zaslav responded that the corporate goes to have “an actual deal with franchises.”
“We haven’t had a ‘Superman’ movie in 13 years. We haven’t done a ‘Harry Potter’ movie in 15 years. The DC movies and the ‘Harry Potter’ movies provided a number of the profits of Warner Bros. Motion Pictures over the past 25 years,” he said.
“So a deal with the franchise — considered one of the large benefits that now we have, ‘House of the Dragon’ is an example of that, ‘Game of Thrones,’ benefiting from ‘Sex and the City,’ ‘Lord of the Rings,’ we still have the suitable to do ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies. What are the films which have brands which are understood and loved all over the place on the earth?”
Rowling penned the hugely popular “Harry Potter” series, which was became a blockbuster set of eight movies released between 2001 and 2011. Rowling has since been accused of transphobia.
“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of girls globally is erased,” the writer tweeted in June 2020. “I do know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the power of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to talk the reality.”
Rowling has been labeled a “TERF” — a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” — someone who pushes for girls’s rights while excluding transgender women.
“Harry Potter” stars have come forward to oppose Rowling’s divisive stance.
“Trans persons are who they are saying they’re and should live their lives without being continually questioned or told they aren’t who they are saying they’re,” Emma Watson tweeted in June 2020.
“Transgender women are women. Any statement on the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by skilled health care associations who’ve much more expertise on this subject material than either Jo or I,” Daniel Radcliffe wrote in an essay on the time.
Variety cited a studio source who claimed there are not any lively discussions with Rowling about developing one other “Harry Potter” movie.
Yet hit franchises are top of mind for Zaslav.
“When you’ve gotten a franchise movie, you possibly can often make two to 3 times the amount of cash that you just make within the U.S., since you get a slot. And a deal with the large movies which are loved, which are tentpoled, that folks are going to go away early from dinner to go to see — and now we have a number of them,” he said Thursday.
“Batman, Superman, Aquaman, if we will do something with J.K. on ‘Harry Potter’ going forward, ‘Lord of the Rings,’ what are we doing with ‘Game of Thrones’? What are we doing with a number of the large franchises that now we have? We’re focused on franchises.”
