The new management of the media group Warner Bros. Discovery has promised more “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” movies. Warner Bros. Discovery President David Zaslav, 62, said during the presentation of the company’s quarterly results, according to Variety: “We’re going to have a real focus on franchises […]. We haven’t had one in the last 15 years ‘Harry Potter’ [movie] made”. The successful film series around the main character embodied by Daniel Radcliffe (33) has provided a large part of the profits of the Warner Bros. studio over the past 25 years, CEO Zaslav continued. A new “Harry Potter” film is therefore conceivable if template author J.K. Rowling (57) could be won for the project.
The head of Warner Bros. Discovery also mentioned the possibility of new “Lord of the Rings” movies, to which the Warner Bros. film studio “still has the rights”.
The “Fantastic Beasts” film series, for which five parts were originally planned, was not mentioned by Zaslav in his remarks. The “Harry Potter” prequels with Eddie Redmayne (40) as magizoologist Newt Scamander have fallen far short of financial expectations. The third part “Dumbledore’s Secrets” was released in April this year, according to “Variety” a fourth is not currently in development.
In addition, Warner Bros. is currently not in talks with author Rowling about another “Harry Potter” film, for which there is no longer a direct book template. Only the play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, for which Rowling provided the idea, has been repeatedly discussed by fans as a potential continuation of the series for years. Set 19 years after the events of the last novel, it features the main character, Harry Potter, as an adult.
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2”, the final entry in the series, was released in cinemas in 2011. In total, the eight “Harry Potter” films have brought in the incredible sum of 7.7 billion US dollars at the worldwide box office.
Zaslav also failed to mention the upcoming animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, which is slated for release in April 2024. The prequel film takes place around 180 years before the events of Peter Jackson’s legendary film trilogy. It is produced by New Line Cinema, part of Warner Bros. Discovery.
According to Deadline, Warner Bros. Discovery’s net loss was $2.3 billion in the third quarter of 2022.
