Warner Bros. is lucky to own the rights to Harry Potter, one of Hollywood’s most prized intellectual properties, but it also has a downside: it can’t develop any production without J.K. Rowling. The author has the last word on any work derived from her seven-novel saga and, it seems, she is finally being convinced to produce a television series about the best-known magician in literature, pardon Gandalf.
Deadline reports that Warner Bros. is in negotiations with Rowling so that, with her as a producer, Harry Potter can be brought to television, to be exact on HBO Max. The initial idea? That each season of fiction could adapt a different literary installment, with all of them showing the learning of Harry Potter, an orphan boy with a unique story, who enters Hogwarts, a magic school. Once Rowling’s go-ahead is received, a screenwriter will be sought to lead the project with a new vision.
This means that what seemed unimaginable until some time ago will be done: that Harry Potter could tell on television the same story that between 2001 and 2011 could be seen in movie theaters and that earned 7,700 million dollars at the box office.
On that occasion, the screenwriter Steve Kloves signed the scripts, with the exception of the text of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that Michael Goldenberg wrote, and had four directors: Chris Columbus (Home Alone), who directed The Sorcerer’s Stone and The Chamber secret, Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity) who did The Prisoner of Azkabán.
The British Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) and David Yates (State of Play) executed the last adaptations: Newell was responsible for The Order of the Phoenix while Yates finished the saga by leading the last four installments: The Order of the Phoenix, The Half-Blood Prince and the two parts of The Deathly Hallows.
It must be recognized that, on the one hand, it has been more than two decades since the beginning of the film saga, which has just universalized a literary phenomenon that currently has 500 million copies sold. On the other, it’s barely 12 years since the end of Harry’s story, led at the interpretive level by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint as Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley.
Is the public prepared to see the same story? And, more importantly, the linking of J.K. Rowling, paradoxically, can damage the image of the future television series, taking into account her reputation as a transphobe in the online community? For now, her problematic image has not damaged the success of Hogwarts Legacy, the video game released in February.
