Warner Bros. TV has “a lot of interest” in a Harry Potter series
WBTV boss Channing Dungey says there's "a tremendous amount of ambition" to get the Wizarding World on television
Aux News Warner Bros
It’s hard to keep up with the strategy at ol’ Warner Bros. Discovery these days. New CEO David Zaslav has championed the company’s existing IP, with an emphasis on its major franchises. He has also said that the company will “fully embrace theatrical” and lamented that there hadn’t been a Harry Potter movie in 15 years (pay no attention to the Fantastic Beasts behind the curtain). Given these factors, it’s interesting that the next person to tease a possible HP project is over on the television side of things.
“There is a tremendous amount of ambition for that and we are engaged in a number of different conversations,” said WBTV chairwoman and CEO Channing Dungey at the U.K. TV conference Content London, per Variety. While there is nothing “imminent on the horizon,” she admitted, “there is a lot of interest and a lot of passion for it, so absolutely.”
“What’s great is that you see how the audience is so engaged and so ready. Our unscripted team did a fantastic Return To Hogwarts special for HBO last year, that resonated so tremendously, then we did a quiz show, The Tournament Of Houses, that Helen Mirren was the host for,” Dungey continued. “The audience is ready, they want to go, so we’re just to figure out what the right next step is.”
It’s unclear if the ambition to which Dungey refers is strictly in the realm of unscripted (á la Return To Hogwarts and Tournament Of Houses). There could certainly be scripted Harry Potter television separate from the theatrical franchise, much like there is DC superhero television series being developed separately from the DC film universe. (It should be noted this strategy is producing a fractured multiverse of DC content, unlike what the competition is doing over at Disney+ with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.)
And while Zaslav has said that the company would keep “critical” properties “exclusively,” certain titles—even within supposedly “critical” IP!—don’t fall under this jurisdiction. Thus, WBTV has closed a deal with Amazon to stream DC animated content.
“One of the interesting things that’s exciting for me at this moment, the approach of the previous management was much more like ‘Everything has to stay in house, we don’t want anything to go outside,’” Dungey revealed at the conference. “David Zaslav has been much more open to our exploring all of our animated IP and being able to do it on different platforms. Certainly HBO Max is going to be our first stop but we’re already in the process of closing a big deal with Amazon that’s going to feature some of our DC-branded content in animation.”
So there you have it: embrace theatrical, except for what’s television, and keep a tight rein on the IP, except for lowly animation. As long as it makes dollars, it will definitely make sense.
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Youtube from ten years ago already got it covered , DC-Warners.
Marvel always referred to DC as the “Distinguished Competition” — was there an equivalent moniker that DC used for Marvel? Just wondered after the reference to “the competition” in the article.
As the upstart, Marvel and Stan Lee in particular were more jocular about the rivalry in print. DC would consider it above them to use a nickname like that.
Couldn’t be any worse than the (pre-Andor) live-action Star Wars shows!
Oh you sweet summer child
I mean, animated or not, I would really love to watch a version of Harry Potter that actually follows all of the intricate plotting and multiple viewpoints of the novels. The movies are just so focused on Harry as the POV character, for understandable time-related reasons, that so much really great world-building and story had to fall by the wayside. There is a wealth of stuff left to explore. I’d be pretty psyched for it, assuming that they get an appropriately talented team of people behind it.
that would be cool, but I’m sure what they’re talking about would be like “Young Hagrid” or “That One Other Time Voldemort Almost Came Back We Forgot to Mention Until Now.”
lol, yeah. You’re probably right.
If I had to guess, if its not another adaption of Harry Potter, it’s going to be the one prequel everyone asked for(but for some reason we got Fantastic Beast and JK Rowling turn TERF) the Marauders show. Set at Hogwarts, during Voldermort’s reign; starring a bunch of characters people care about(James, Sirius, Lupin, Lilly, Snape, Dumbledore, McGongall, Hagrid). I think the only thing stopping it would be the re-castinf of Dumbledore, McGongall and Hagrid because young actors don’t really work since in the books at least, it’s only been twenty odd years between the Marauders graduating and the start of Harry Potter
They could go the Star Trek: Discovery route and decide a totally new character is really a new sibling of Harry’s that nobody ever mentioned or hinted at before because reasons.
Harry Potter and that one crazy summer between years we forgot to mention the first time around
The books were 99% focused on Harry’s POV as well
Maybe POV wasn’t the most apt term to use. I meant more that characters get their own subsidiary storylines and there are a lot of stories that are taking place outside of Harry’s direct involvement.
“intricate plotting”Dude the books were written for 7 year olds
A whole season where they spend the whole time complaining about all the homework they have to do.
idk that the worldbuilding was that good really. I always saw the series as a poster child for “high concept, character and theme driven series that falls apart if you stray too far from the story”.Most of the stuff that’s mentioned in passing is just quick gags or bits of flavour; and the only career paths in the wizarding world seem to be schoolteacher, shopkeeper, bureaucrat and nazi-hunter. And the less said about Rowling’s attempts to expand the world, the better.
I still think some kind of HBO prestige-style format, like a 10 episode season that focusses on one book each, would work. Once you get past having to recast the main characters, which I’m sure a lot of people would have issues with.
That’s gonna be a no from me dawg. The movies were great but I already own them, and I’d rather not support Rowling beyond that.
I… actually don’t own any of the HP media myself. I kept waiting for a good deal on the hardcovers (preferably with the original text, but I realize that’s most likely a pipe dream in these United States), and never saw a price on the Blu-Rays that was quite cheap enough for me to pull the trigger on. And now, well… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I remember a time when I would’ve been excited to hear about some high-budget HP tv shows. Now, it’s the last thing I’d want to spend my time on.
Yeah, good luck with that. It’s honestly quite amazing how dead the IP is when only, what, five or six years ago it was still the hottest YA franchise out there.Everything beyond the original six books/seven films has landed somewhere between faltered and failed, with even the best success of Cursed Child regarded as terrible writing but saved by stage production effects, while trying to redo those original books again would just flatline because there’s no demand for it. And trying to do something with the original cast wouldn’t get off the ground given how Rowling notoriously burns bridges with anyone who’s pro-trans.The only things likely to still have any success are cashgrabs aiming to make a return off of the nostalgia for the mainline film series, such as that “reunion special” Rowling was kept away from, and the Hogwarts Legacy game because while it may look to be a janky mess it’s the first “open-world RPG” for the series.
“Original six” books? A cursory Google search leads me to believe that term refers to Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Neville, and Luna; is that correct?
No, it’s the original six books. So PS, CoS, PoA, GoF, OotP, HBP, and DH.
That is seven books my dude. And there were eight films.
My mistake, must’ve just subtracted one in my head for some reason (maybe subconsciously remembering how much people hated one of the books and one of the films (typically OotP and Hallows Part 1 in particular)).
No, clearly you just start counting from zero, like all good programmers.
I think Rowling’s initial blow to the franchise was Fantastic Beasts. I don’t think direct continuation from Deathly Hallows was what the franchise ended, but that particular spin-off failed to capitalize on why people even like this universe. Fantastic Beasts 2 bored me to a level where staying awake through more felt an unlikely prospect for me.I have no idea what Rowling didn’t just make a movie about the American equivalent of Hogwarts, she wrote a bunch of lore entries about it, but we never see it. Just write that a relative of a familiar HP character has to spend a year in at the American magic school and it is an easy hook.While I’ve seen some speculation about potentially problematic things concerning the storyline of Hogwarts Legacy, the gameplay I’ve seen online looks like everything you could possibly want from a Harry Potter game.
Is it dead? The illustrated version of Order of the Phoenix book is the #5 best selling book on Amazon Right now, people still flock to Harry Potter world, and there is tons of positive buzz around the game.I think calling the IP dead is an overstatement. It’s definitely tarnished and tattered and will never be what it once was. If JK Rowling hadn’t turned out to be an awful, hateful person, I’m sure we’d already have had a series about Harry potter from Hbo MAX but they’re probably trying to figure out the ‘Rowling’ of it all.But I think the game will do really well and the show, if interesting will do really well. The problem with Fantastic Beast was that it was AWFUL. From the very first movie it was bad, then the second movie was worse, and the third movie worse than that. It was a story no one wanted, no one needed and one that with each movie proved it didn’t need to be told. And she approved Curse Child. And though I never saw the play(and have heard the performances and the special effects are wonderful), I read the play and dear God…what poorly written trite. I imagine great actors on broadway can only lift so much because JFC.Sadly, ALL OF THAT, probably hurt Rowling’s reputation more than her TERF-dom, which people still defend. Hell, I still highly respected Rowling when Fantastic Beast came out and even I was like “no…this was not good…”, and then the next one came out and I was like “sheeesh this awful”Honestly, I think if they give a Harry Potter series a great showrunner and don’t have Rowling too involved, it could be great. It’s funny, looking back at Rowling as an adult now, seeing little tells(Fat people = evil, unmarried women = crazy, bitter. Girls = bossy and shrill, prone to shrieking and being terrified unlike boys).
Star Wars had problematic stuff too but George Lucas isn’t a bigot.
I mean, an illustrated version of a twenty year old book (probably being bought by older people as a holiday gift) and people still visiting a years old section of a larger theme park is pretty much an indicator of how dead it is, with only nostalgia getting attention. And her outing herself as a transphobe really did kill her appeal amongst the core audience of people who grew up with the series.The game, as said, is probably the only thing that’ll do well but even they’ve had to put series PR into disassociating with her enough that people can claim ignorance of her getting money from it.Also the Cursed Child was written by Rowling, it was just turned into a script by someone else.
“The only things likely to still have any success are cashgrabs aiming to make a return off of the nostalgia for the mainline film series”Don’t forget this is Warner Bros.
Ah, shit.
The Harry Potter brand isn’t even close to being dead, no matter how badly JK Rowling want’s to fuck up her legacy. AV Club, and nerd internet at large, is generally a bubble. Despite most of us swearing off new HP material, the general public doesn’t really care, and will happily eat that shit up.
And yet the Fantastic Beasts films, despite none of them being great, have gone from profitable to barely breaking even and landing outside the Top 10.
I mean, you can’t place all the blame on the HP Ip for that. You already said it, the movies weren’t great, they got progressively worse over time, and the lead actor for Grindelwald changed three times. Don’t forget the controversies about Depp that started around the time the second film was announced and the frustrations that audiences had when he replaced Ferrell. They were doomed from the start.
And yet that one made hundreds of millions more despite being rated worse while the more recent one had higher ratings and at this point still may have made a loss.The only notable difference between the two periods is Rowling’s frequent transphobia.
How much interest?
If it’s a Harry Potter project that doesn’t at all involve Rowling (even without the controversy, her attempts to expand the universe on Pottermore, Cursed Child, and the Fantastic Beasts franchise have been terrible) and Yates (no idea how this dude keeps getting HP directing jobs with the most lifeless efforts possible), could be interesting.
I have been screaming about this for years: Harry and Ron grow up to be Aurors, wizard cops. That’s the show. A Law and Order/Gotham type police procedural show set in the wizarding world starring Radcliffe and Grint. They will PRINT MONEY.
True Auror
My pitch has always been “Neville Longbottom: Adventure Herbologist,” where you basically turn Neville into Indiana Jones (teacher by work day, adventurer on the weekends) who goes around fighting for magical plant conservation or looking for lost magical seeds/growths. Classic adventure archetypes, but with a modern conservationist/environmental twist.
That leans too close to Newt Scamander for me, but I’m all for Neville getting his time to shine so, alright, I’m on board anyway.
I always figured Harry had enough of auror-type stuff while he was growing up. In my head canon, he’s the prof of Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, and pays special attention to the kids in his class who’re lonely or afraid. Might be simple, but that’s how I’d like to see it.
I’ll only rubber stamp this idea if it is *really* like Law & Order, and Radcliffe has Lennie Briscoe-style one-liners constantly. Hermione will, obviously, be the courtroom side of the show.
Hermione’s their Chief.
Adapt Magician you cowards!
If there was a way to do it without giving Rowling one red cent, I’d say go for it. But there’s not, so fuck that.
Outside of the weird twitter progressive bubble where everybody hates JK Rowling, in the real world, she is still very popular and the Harry Potter franchise is still very much in demand. I see the movies all the time in the most rented movies in Apple Movies for example, and that has been the case for years. Nothing comes even close to that not SW not LOTR. It’s exactly like the talk before HotD, GoT was supposedly dead and we saw what happened.If they do something decent, respectful of the world and the characters it will be a huge success. If they go the Disney/Amazon road of angering the fans and pushing politics – it will be the usual disaster.
It’s funny I don’t know why ANYONE would rent the HP movies. Like, at least in the US there is 1, or usually 2 doing a marathon of the HP movies like every single weekend, or hell even weekday. They get more play on cable than The Shawshank Redemption, which a comdien once joked you could find on cable on some channel every single day.
I have no idea I never did it and my kids watch them on cable or something from time to time.
That’s how I watched them, though I did buy my BFF the blu ray box set of them a while back.
Yep. There’s absolutely no goddamned way that they let this thing die.