Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav made an interesting assertion about the Harry Potter franchise and its future during a conference call on Nov. 3, 2022. When discussing the Wizarding World, Zaslav claimed he and the studio would be willing to work with author J.K. Rowling to produce more Harry Potter movies despite the author’s controversial comments.
“We’re going to focus on franchises. 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. I’d like to see if we can do something with J.K. on Harry Potter going forward.”
As noted by Collider, one of the issues surrounding the Harry Potter franchise is that J.K. Rowling’s comments have turned off so many fans and even actors who starred in previous movies, such as Daniel Radcliffe. In a piece published for the LGBTQ youth nonprofit The Trevor Project, Radcliffe spoke out against Rowling’s comments and apologized to anyone who felt “their experience of the books [was] tarnished or diminished” by the author’s strict stance.
The last Wizarding World movie to hit theaters was Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, which grossed over $400 million at the box office against a production budget of $200 million and was the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2022. Secrets of Dumbledore was intended to be the third entry to the five-part Fantastic Beast series; however, Warner Bros. Discovery has yet to greenlight the final two films.