Since Hollywood is incapable of having an original thought or coming up with new stories, it should come as no surprise that Warner Brothers is mulling over the possibility of a Harry Potter reboot.
Bounding Into Comics reports that during an earnings call in November, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav told Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall:
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.
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.
One of the ideas that is apparently being kicked around is that the reboot will feature all of the same characters, but there are rumors that the offerings might involve new material. Commenters were quick to opine that the reboot would be a voyage from Platform 9¾ into the Magical World of Wokeness, with the denizens of Hogwarts and the wizarding world changing out their races, genders, and orientations. Which, given the reactions by many (including members of the cast of the original series) to J.K. Rowling’s take on transgender issues, might not be all that surprising. Hollywoke has probably been drooling over the opportunity to use Rowling’s creation as a way to snarkily comment on her TERF status. Or it could just be an effort to breathe life into an old franchise.
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While it is a pretty sure bet that some sort of woke elements will find their way into a reboot, we can shake our heads and go back to the original movies or, better yet, the books. But beyond that, a Harry Potter reboot is emblematic of the same problem evinced by all of the DC and Marvel movies: New writers stink. Rowling created her universe out of whole cloth. The new writers, aside from carrying out the mission that all previous pop culture mythologies must be dismantled so as to make them better, are too lazy to do that. Reboots are the products of years of participation medals and lectures on self-esteem. They are the inevitable result of an entitled generation that thinks that the mere act of showing up at a given place close to the appointed time is an achievement in and of itself. By tweaking someone else’s work, they can sit back with a soy latte and congratulate themselves on a job well done. I feel sorry for the next generation. Entertainment-wise, the next fifty years will be, if nothing else, boring as hell.
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