A new rumor claims that Warner Bros. Discovery will reboot the Harry Potter film franchise.
This new rumor comes on the heels of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav indicating he wanted to pursue the Harry Potter franchise during the company’s 2022 Q3 earnings call.
Back in November, Zaslav responded to a question from Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall telling him, “One, we’re going to have a real focus on franchises. We haven’t had a Superman movie in 13 years. We haven’t done a Harry Potter movie in 15 years. One of — the DC movies and the Harry Potter movies provided a lot of the profits of Warner Bros. Motion Pictures over the last 25 years. So focused on the — one of the big advantages that we have, House of the Dragon is an example of that, Game of Thrones, taking advantage of Sex and the City. Lord of the Rings, we still have the right to do Lord of the Rings movies.”
He later added, “And so when you have a franchise movie, you can often make 2 to 3x the amount of money you make in the U.S. because you get a slot. And a focus on the big movies that are loved, that are tentpole, that people are going to leave home, leave early from dinner to go to see and we have a lot of them, Batman, Superman, Aquaman, if we can 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 lot of the big franchises that we have? We’re focused on franchises.”
Nearly two months after these comments, this new rumor about the Harry Potter film franchise getting rebooted comes from known scooper and leaker WDW Pro.
He posted to Twitter, “WBD is reportedly looking to reboot the Harry Potter film franchise, including recasting, in the next 3-5 years.”
“We will release some details of how I became aware of this information, presented by a source, on the Valliant Renegade channel tomorrow morning,” he concluded.
On Valliant Renegade’s channel, WDW Pro reiterated the rumor, “It now seems extremely likely that the Harry Potter universe, which I think internally is called The Wizarding division, it is receiving a reboot in the future in terms of the movies.”
“And that may also include recasting some of the roles that have become iconic inside the Harry Potter universe with the major actors and characters,” he added.
WDW Pro then clarified this would be a new adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s first seven Harry Potter novels, “We’re not talking about Fantastical Beasts. We’re not talking about some of these ancillary Harry Potter things. We’re talking about what is referred to inside the industry as core Harry Potter.”
Valliant Renegade then made it even clearer, “You’re looking at that original cast: Harry, Hermione, Ron. New cast. Starting over.”
However, later in the video, WDW Pro indicated it might not be a straight reboot, “The way that they reboot this franchise does not have to be your standard fare reboot, where we go back to the origin of the character we’ve already had an adventure with. There are many different ways they could do that and we’re not here to tell you that we know what is yet.”
“They’re not even close, I would think, to being at that point,” he continued, “In fact, according to the source they don’t have sort of the James Gunn individual yet in charge of this. THat’s part of what they’re aiming for.”
As for why they would be completely rebooting, Valliant Renegade posited, “They feel like perhaps the original Harry Potter fandom is kind of aging out and they want to revitalize or refresh this, or make something new to drive new audiences theaters.”
WDW Pro further added, “From the standpoint of the OG stuff, the core Harry Potter stuff, I mean it’s a dormant franchise, and that’s particularly why we are being told that in the next three to five years they are looking to reboot this thing.”
“Because all the other stuff inside this Potter universe, inside of this Wizarding division at Warner Bros. Discovery, it’s not taking off the way that they need to in order to sustain the franchise,” he elaborated. “And they have far too much invested in the franchise for it to become dormant or secondary. They want it to be a very strong evergreen property. And by that we mean it’s selling all the time, that it’s always the top of mind of consumers.”
“And because they have not been able to get the other stuff, these sort of secondary things off the ground and gain that momentum that they had with the originals, the thinking that they have is that it’s time for Hollywood to get over this fear of recasting and so they’re ready to do that,” he asserted.
What do you make of this latest rumor? Would you want to see a Harry Potter reboot?
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