A Warner Bros. exec confirmed that he would like to start making more popular franchise movies, including “Harry Potter,” and mentioned he wants series creator J.K. Rowling involved.
“We’re going to focus on franchises,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during an investor’s call Thursday, per The Hollywood Reporter.
“We haven’t had a Superman movie in 13 years. We haven’t done a Harry Potter in 15 years. The DC movies and the Harry Potter movies provided a lot of the profits for Warner Bros. …over the past 25 years.”
Zaslav mentioned that the studio owns the rights to “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter,” so they’d like to expand on those franchises, “if we can do something with J.K. on ‘Harry Potter’ going forward.”
Warner Bros’ eight-movie “Harry Potter” franchise earned $7.7 billion in box office revenue from 2001 to 2011. The studio has also worked with Rowling on the spinoff series “Fantastic Beasts.” THR noted that the most recent film, “The Secrets of Dumbledore,” earned more than $405 million following its April premiere.
Rowling has become very controversial in the public sphere thanks to her stance on the trans agenda and her willingness to speak against it. The author has had many actors from the film franchise and former colleagues turn on her because of her views.
Most recently, the author was not part of a “Harry Potter” reunion special, which premiered in January of this year. Rowling said “no one said don’t come,” but she still chose not to participate in “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts.”
“Yeah, I was asked to be on that and I decided I didn’t want to do it,” she said during a podcast interview at the time. “I thought it was about the films more than the books, you know, quite rightly. I mean, that was what the anniversary was about.”
By that point, many of the younger stars had been distancing themselves from Rowling amid the trans rights controversy, saying they disagreed with her stance. Daniel Radcliffe recently reiterated his position.
“The reason I was felt very, very much as though I needed to say something when I did was because, particularly since finishing ‘Potter,’ I’ve met so many queer and trans kids and young people who had a huge amount of identification with Potter on that,” Radcliffe told IndieWire during an interview.
Very insightful article! Its great to see such well-researched content. Lets talk more about this. Check out my profile!