A lot of people are dooming about the Harry Potter TV Series being an inevitable success that will make JK Rowling a ton of money, but I want to remind y’all they are spending more money producing this thing than any TV series has EVER MADE
It’s not enough for it to be a hit - to even break even, it would have to be BY FAR the MOST PROFITABLE TV SERIES IN HISTORY
I do not think it will clear that bar, even if the prospective audience doesn’t care about Rowling’s transphobia
It is very, very likely this crashes like Rings of Power did, except even harder
They set the bar impossibly high, if it isn’t the defining phenomenon of the century they lose boatloads of money, and I just don’t see enough people caring for that
This is why you see Harry Potter collabs in every little thing now btw
Warner Bros is desperately trying to get people back into Harry Potter in the lead up to the series
They are spending more money producing EACH INDIVIDUAL EPISODE than each Harry Potter MOVIE cost
I think they could have made a shitton of money if they kept the budget reasonable - but they’re lighting money on fire instead!
The real worry is whether JK Rowling will make a bunch of money off royalties even if the show is a total failure).
And this is only one take among many.
If you like the concept of Harry Potter but not so much the author (or the execution), there are plenty of alternatives that you can consult — and no, I am not talking about cheap knock-offs. A Wizard of Earthsea, The Books of Magic, and Wizard’s Hall, among others, are all worth a glance.
Sure, you could use some of your digital wizardry to watch the show illegitimately, but an argument could be made that even nonpaying methods still encourage the franchise. It would be better than watching it legitimately but you’d be better off spending your precious time on elsewhat.
There’s a big chance they lose money, but one thing Harry Potter’s always been good at is selling merch. I can see them making their money back through a worldwide increase in sales. I’ll be rooting it fails spectacularly, though
I don’t think the comparison with Rings of Power is apt, RoP was very loosely based on some scraps of Tolkien’s actual work with mediocre writers filling in most of it, the new HP will just reiterate the films/books
crazy to me the Worst Witch(british magic boarding school in a castle) is not recommended as a HP analogue its not as good as Wizard of earthsea obviously but its very close to HP I surprised there aren’t more accusation of plagiarism about it specifically and there’s already a TV show of it
worst witch has a very different vibe
Apart from making the school unisex the worst witch is if the vibes of the first ~2 hp books continued and didn’t getting darker and more ‘mature’
yeah pretty much though i’d argue the first 2 hp books have higher stakes than worst witch
Witch Hat Atelier is another superior execution of many of the same story premises.
Harry Potter franchise will crash and fall as all the milk as been removed from the cow and now they are just collecting the earth from which the milk had once dropped on.
I expect Hogwarts Legacy 2 to fail. Remember, political views of the IP creator will affect sales.
It’s fascinating how many “progressives” defend this franchise and pretend them support it via fanart, fanfics, engagement is not making JKR richer - as if online activity is not a signal which the shareholders gage if they should invest in it.
Doc Vivi Leandra
That’s my fav transfem vtuber! She does science stuff more than expected.
god i hope so
Definitely gonna flop. I mean the generation that grew up with Harry Potter is like in their 30s by now and only a few percentage is a diehard fan. People only gonna watch it if it’s in their streaming platform of their choice as just another slop series to pass time and it will quickly fade away like most other slop series.
Definitely gonna flop. I mean the generation that grew up with Harry Potter is like in their 30s by now and only a few percentage is a diehard fan. People only gonna watch it if it’s in their streaming platform of their choice as just another slop series to pass time and it will quickly fade away like most other slop series.
Probably the ideal time to do it would have been when Netflix was good before streaming services had become so splintered like cable; or simply do the movies as a TV series instead, to begin with. Now it is just going to be another TV show that is an ordeal to locate and pay for, in a sea of remakes, spinoffs, and rehashes, for a franchise that is “been there, done that.”
The books and movies have already been out for a long time. The movies have plenty worth criticizing from an execution standpoint, but the actors are already imprinted as the live action representations of the characters. Attempting to replace them with another set doesn’t add anything and may actually subtract in the long-term. Not to mention, fans who watched the movies when they were kids, having also reading the series as kids, and who are now grown ass adults, are probably going to find it a bit weird to watch a bunch of children play witch/wizard, in ways that it wasn’t weird when they were themselves kids.
And I’m doubtful of the franchise’s ability to latch onto new generations, considering the author’s vocal transphobia, as well as the general “lightning in a bottle” nature of the story. Some of it may be how much I’ve developed politically, but I have a hard time seeing it as a cultural mainstay in the world as it is now. It’s a story that fits somewhere into the unipolar western-world-saviors narrative of world events and it seems increasingly quaint in retrospect. It’s also a story whose take on magic world vs. real world looks increasingly silly with how far the most capable of technology has come and is continuing to develop. Magic in general, when set in current day, has a harder time looking fantastical when technology is itself already fantastical. And with the post-WWII imperialist hegemony in decline, there’s less to prop up the believability of rag tag western heroes taking on a Hitler-like villain. The closest to a real life Hitler-like villain that western audiences would probably see as one is Trump and Trump is not cunning and resourceful like Voldemort, he’s brutish and narcissistic. And magic is not going to save people from ICE.
So I just see it being harder for people to relate to the material. Harry Potter as an analog to fighting Hitler works in a world where it feels like Hitler is gone now and they’re making sure he doesn’t come back. Don’t think it works so well in a world where more people are coming back around to understanding that history did not begin with Hitler and that Hitler was born of the west’s barbarity, not the creator of it.
