Warner Bros.' CEO, David Zaslav, wants to double down on Harry Potter content despite of Secrets of Dumbledore's poor box office performance.
Warner Bros. has a brand-new CEO, David Zaslav, and that means changes are coming to the company. Zaslav's appointment as CEO follows a merger between WarnerMedia (which subsequently owns HBO Max) and Discovery. This is big news for a ton of different franchises including, of course, Harry Potter.
Now, in a report from Wall Street Journal, it seems that Zaslav is looking to get as much out of the Harry Potter franchise as possible. This is a surprising revelation seeing as Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is a box office flop (the film has had the worst performance in the history of the franchise). So, what does this mean for Harry and his friends?
Well, perhaps it could mean that they will either get rid of the Fantastic Beasts movies or put in extra effort to make the future movies... well...good (seriously, that last one was painful). Alternatively, it could also mean a couple of other attempts at spinoff films and content for HBO and HBO Max.
Warner Bros. Bringing Harry Potter to HBO Max
In a report breaking down the David Zaslav's first moves at Warner Bros. Discovery, The Wall Street Journal has revealed the CEO's plan to bring Harry Potter content to HBO Max. According to the Journal, Zaslav has plans to meet with J.K. Rowling in the next couple of weeks to begin the process of producing content for the streaming platform.
It seems a bit strange to, at this stage, be seriously thinking about future Harry Potter projects. With The Secrets of Dumbledore being a catastrophic failure, you would think that Warner Bros. would first want to find a solution to the flailing film series before moving onto new projects. On the flip side, though, this could be an attempt to revive the franchise literally because of those failures. It's hard to know.
If you were to ask me, I would tell you one simple thing: Warner Bros. Discovery need to take the Harry Potter franchise and revive it with an ensemble-style movie similar to the originals. The actual "Harry Potter" movies were about an incredible cast of characters, surrounded by a wonderful world. Not a wonderful world with a... not so incredible cast of characters.
The new Harry Potter game will be out before we know it, and will hopefully revitalize the franchise for video game players. It's problematic, though, that the Fantastic Beasts movies have left such an incredibly sour taste in our mouth. There is also a strong movement to remove J.K. Rowling from the equation. We're not sure what David Zaslav will do, but we're interested to find out.