The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997. The franchise soared to un-predecented heights in the years to follow, with every book a blockbuster and the movies creating a new generation of stars. Harry Potter became one of the marquee franchises held dear by millennials and, the executive at Warner Bros. Discovery hope, their kids. To that end, the studio is making a push to bring Harry Potter to bear on all fronts: on TV, in video games, and through sweet, sweet merch.
Here at WiC, we're most interested in the upcoming Harry Potter TV show on HBO, which will adapt J.K. Rowling's original seven books with a whole new cast of actors playing the likes of Harry, Ron and Hermione. But it's hard to disentangle that show from WBD's wider plan. According to a new report in Variety, the team working on the upcoming video game sequel to Hogwarts Legacy — which was the best-selling video game of 2023 — is "coordinating some of the big-picture storytelling elements" with the team working on the HBO show.
That's interesting, since the original Hogwarts Legacy game was set in the 1800s while HBO's Harry Potter show is, one assumes, set much closer to the modern day, just like the books and the original movies were. I'm not sure what kind of coordination needs to happen to bring those two stories into harmony, unless the sequel to Hogwarts Legacy jumps way forward in time. The wider point is that all this stuff is related: decisions about Hogwarts Legacy could affect decisions about the HBO show could affect decisions about the Epic Universe Harry Potter theme park, and on and on.
How involved in J.K. Rowling in all of this?
The long-term goal of this push is to turn Harry Potter into the kind of franchise that remains consistently popular for generations. WBD executive Robert Oberschelp likens it to the enduring popularity of Batman, another character owned by the studio. “How many different Batmans are there?” he asks. He hopes that fans will one day ask each other, “What Harry are you?”
The Harry Potter franchise has encountered some bumps over the years. The Fantastic Beasts movie franchise, penned by J.K. Rowling, ended earlier than initially planned thanks to diminishing box office returns with each subsequent movie; star Eddie Redmayne doesn't think they're coming back.
Then there's Rowling herself, who has publicly embraced anti-trans views over the last several years, getting into public feuds with cast members from the movies and alienating the fan base. Variety gives us our first report in a while on how much control, if any, she now has of the franchise she created, writing that she is "not involved in managing the franchise, but WBD executives keep her updated via her literary agent." According to Oberschelp, "If we’re going to ever go beyond a canon conversation, we make sure that we’re all comfortable with what we’re doing.”
Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking
The first volley in this new Harry Potter offensive arrives very soon: Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking, a reality show where contestants "produce elaborate cakes that taste great and tell a story that reflects Potter’s Wizarding World" premieres on Max and the Food Network next Thursday, November 14. The show is hosted by James and Oliver Phelps, who played twin brothers Fred and George Weasley in the Harry Potter movies, and was shot on the actual movie sets at Leavesden Studios. For a cooking reality show, it's pretty elaborate.
WBD is hoping this all pays off. We'll find out slowly, together, over the next few years.
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