There are few franchises on the planet as ubiquitous as Harry Potter, nor as lucrative. Right now the Fantastic Beasts movies are carrying the franchise, but what comes after?
Naturally, Warner Bros. is hoping to develop the beloved Wizarding World further in the years to come. But don’t expect 10,000 spinoffs to appear all at once. “We would love to develop more original Harry Potter series, and we regularly talk to J.K. Rowling and her team,” CEO Ann Sarnoff said at a conference, as detailed by The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s got to be right though. Whatever we do has to be true to the canon and true to the ethos of the Wizarding World, and who Harry is.”
The studio is already warming up. On January 1, it will premiere Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts on HBO Max. Similar to the Friends reunion earlier this year, this special reunites the cast of the movies two decades later so they can reminisce. Watch the trailer, but be warned: you may begin to cry.
EA nearly made a Harry Potter MMO game in the 2000s!
As the movie cast gathers to remember the magic of the franchise, former Electronic Arts director of marketing Kim Salzer, looks back on the developer’s failed attempt at making a Harry Potter MMO.
The MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) video game was in the works between 2000-2003 but was ultimately scrapped because they didn’t think the hype for Harry Potter would hold much longer. How wrong they were. “Sometimes, I just don’t know where to start,” she said during a Twitch live stream with Original Gamer Life. “But a big one for me, because I was so personally involved in it and it’s such a huge IP that has lived on, is a online massively multiplayer game for Harry Potter.”
Imagine a Harry Potter MMO...
— OGL: Original Gamer Life (@OGLifeOGL) December 22, 2021
It almost happened but #EA cancelled it. They did the research and even a beta version of the game, but didn't think Harry Potter was going to be around more than a few years.#harrypotter #hogwarts #voldemort #mmo #metaverse #multiverse pic.twitter.com/bt5u6YQ2oe
"EA was going through some changes at that time, and they just didn’t know, or believe enough, that that IP would have a shelf life longer than a year or two."
Yikes! I suppose that game will remain the one that got away. But at least we’re still getting what looks to be a wonderful game in the form of Hogwarts Legacy in 2022.
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