The Dunk & Egg show is a great idea (and the Harry Potter show an awful one)

The Harry Potter reboot is a sad example of corporate greed that we’ve seen before

Unlike A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, which is a spinoff about entirely new characters, Max’s new Harry Potter show is a total reboot which aims to be a “faithful adaptation” of J.K. Rowling’s original books.

Warner Bros. famously adapted those books into an enormously successful run of movies that came out between 2001 and 2011. While the movies made deviations from Rowling’s novels, they were still largely faithful, which makes this reboot feel superfluous at best; it’s re-adapting the exact same story we already saw get a relatively great adaptation that ended barely over a decade ago. And despite being billed as a “faithful” book adaptation, yesterday’s announcement relied entirely on the images, score, and style of the films. It’s pretty hard to take seriously the claims that textual fidelity is driving this decision.

So creatively, it makes about as much sense to re-adapt Harry Potter at this point as it does to re-adapt The Lord of the Rings, which is to say, absolutely none. This is entirely a business-driven decision, and unlike A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms — where we can at least conceive of how it might be a creatively exciting project — rebooting Harry Potter feels like a soulless move. The Fantastic Beasts spinoff movies failed badly enough that Warner Bros. Discovery seemingly scrapped plans to make more, but at least they were attempting to do something new within the Harry Potter universe. Not so this new show.

If I sound jaded, it’s because this is far from the first time Harry Potter has been milked in such a way. Following the release of the final Harry Potter movie back in 2011, there was a period of time where Rowling and her publishers released all sorts of tie-in books and merchandise, such as mini-world books like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, poster books, coloring books, wands…the list is close to endless. While many fans rejoiced at being able to collect these things, there were also plenty of people who just wanted another actual Harry Potter novel.

Then in 2016, the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child debuted on the London stage. To go along with it, Scholastic’s Arthur A. Levine imprint released a hardcover script book of the same name, which was marketed as the “eighth Harry Potter story.”

I happened to be working in a Barnes & Noble during this time and still have flashbacks to the masses of people who flooded the store on release day, only to return days later outraged to discover that the “eighth Harry Potter story” they had bought wasn’t another novel, but the play script bound with a nice cover. Sure, they could have paid a little more attention to what they were actually buying, but the point is that Scholastic specifically marketed the thing in a way that capitalized on fans’ longing for more Harry Potter books, even if that’s not exactly what the play was giving them.

But I digress. The point is that we’ve already seen book publishers try to milk Harry Potter dry. Now we’re seeing WB Discovery do the exact same thing.

The other problem with Harry Potter is the J.K. Rowling of it all

Then there’s the controversy surrounding Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. Rowling has drawn a lot of heat in recent years for repeatedly pedaled harmful transphobic talking points, most of which is easily disproven by actually looking at studies or talking to trans people about their lived experiences.

Whether you think Rowling is being “canceled” (obviously she isn’t, since she just signed a deal for a 10-year series with Max) or you despise her for her views, the fact remains that she is one of the most influential authors in the world and is actively choosing to use that massive platform to campaign against an already marginalized group. And far from holding these discussions in a nuanced and responsible way, she’s doubled down to paint herself as the victim in the situation, going so far as to compare trans people to the Nazi-esque Death Eaters of her novels.

That should make her a questionable business partner at best, but Max has embraced her. Unlike the Hogwarts Legacy video game, which made a clear effort to distance itself from Rowling, Max has made her an executive producer on the Harry Potter remake.

When asked about how they reconciled this decision with Rowling’s bigotry, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max content Casey Bloys dodged the question. “That’s a very online conversation, very nuanced and complicated and not something we’re going to get into,” he said. “Our priority is what’s on the screen. Obviously, the ‘Harry Potter’ story is incredibly affirmative and positive and about love and self-acceptance. That’s our priority — what’s on screen.”

This is a pretty cowardly dismissal; sure, much of the controversy surrounding Rowling has taken place online in spaces like Twitter, but the author’s statements absolutely have a real-world effect, especially now when the rights of trans people are increasingly under fire. It’s disappointing that HBO wasn’t ready to address this topic, and it doesn’t suggest that they’ll take it seriously going forward.

So by choosing to remake Harry Potter, we have a one-two punch of credibility loss for Max. On the one hand, they’re showing that this new streaming service prioritizes safe, stable IPs over nurturing rising creatives, and on the other that they’re more than happy to work even more closely with J.K. Rowling without even deigning to address the obvious discomfort that is going to cause for a lot of people, or how this deal will enable her to continue pushing harmful views by giving her renewed media attention.

For my part, I’ll just stick to looking forward to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and happily boycott Harry Potter when it eventually comes out. After all, it’s not like I haven’t seen it before.

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