Warner Bros Discovery is under pressure to have another big hit, but there is no sign fans are calling for a new portrayal of the boy wizard The original Harry Potter series starred Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint. Photo: Warner Brothers Entertainment conglomerate Warner Bros Discovery is in trouble, and leaking money like a sieve. Earlier this month, at the unveiling of the company’s quarterly results, Wall Street was told that WBD’s television business is worth $9.
1 billion less than was previously believed. The man delivering the bad news was its CEO David Zaslav, who came up with the idea of a merger between Discovery and the historic movie studio back in 2022. He’s also the one being blamed for WBD’s current woes, which include losing the television rights to live NBA games — a very, very big blow in the US.
Normally, the average viewer probably couldn’t care less about mergers and acquisitions, stocks and shares or profits and losses. Such things are the stuff of business and finance pages, not the entertainment section. Until, that is, they start to have a negative impact on the TV shows and films people love.
For those of us to whom the business dealings of major corporations are as baffling as quantum physics, WBD’s sharp fall from financial grace is hard to fathom. We live in an age when, rightly or wrongly, owning an established intellectual property (IP) that’s immediately recognisable to the general public and can be plundered for new content over and over again is all-important to the big studios. Disney, for example, owns Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm — home of Star Wars and Indiana Jones — and 21st Century Fox, which makes The Simpsons.
But WBD is sitting on an IP goldmine of its own. It owns DC, home to the two most iconic characters in comic book history: Batman and Superman. Colin Farrell as The Penguin in 'The Batman'.
Photo: Jamie Hawkesworth Next month sees the arrival of The Penguin, a 10-part spin-off from 2022’s The Batman, with Colin Farrell returning as the rotund villain, while a new Superman, written and directed by James Gunn, hits cinemas next summer. WBD is also sitting on the rights to the meatiest JRR Tolkien properties: the Lord of the Rings novels themselves and all the attendant characters (Amazon’s The Rings of Power, on the other hand, draws only on the books’ appendices). To the untrained eye, all would seem to be rosy in the WBD garden.
But Zaslav, burned by the box-office bombs that were The Flash and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, has been on a frantic slash-and-burn mission. Nearly 1,000 WBD employees have lost their jobs. A number of series, including The Time Traveller’s Wife, the Batman spin-off Gotham Knights and the animated Blade Runner: Black Lotus, have been axed.
In a move that infuriated comic book fans, Zaslav binned the film Batgirl, on which production had virtually been completed, as a $90 million tax write-down. It’s unlikely it will ever see the light of day. But there’s one piece of IP that Zaslav will be hoping can help turn WBD’s fortunes around: Harry Potter .
JK Rowling's controversial views on transgender issues have alienated many Potter fans. Photo: Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images The sprawling story of the boy wizard is being retold in a series that will run for seven seasons, one devoted to each book, spread over 10 years and featuring an entirely new, as yet undisclosed cast.
The Potter books and movies are a beloved part of millions of childhoods and still draw legions of new fans every year. There was no sign that people were crying out for a reboot. But what seemed, at best, like a risky idea suddenly looks like it might be one of the worst ideas ever.
The reason? Harry Potter ’s creator, JK Rowling. The author’s controversial views on transgender issues, which she shares relentlessly on X, have alienated many Potter fans, who claim she’s betrayed the message of her own books. For some, who are urging a boycott of the upcoming series, Rowling has become a toxic individual — although she appears unperturbed by the backlash.
As far back as 2019, the original Harry, Daniel Radcliffe, who’s made his disdain for Rowling’s views known, predicted that there would be a Harry Potter reboot eventually. “I’m sure there will be some other version of it,” he said in an interview with IGN. “It will be interesting to see how long those films stay.
It feels like there’s a sacredness around them at the moment but that’ll go, the shine will wear off at some point.” Whether the new Harry Potter will shine or be shunned remains to be seen. Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news.
