Current Events > Rumor: Warner Bros is trying to buy Harry Potter rights from Rowing

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://twitter.com/wizardingnews/status/1800223764065690069?s=46&t=uvKEJXfVnbA6SQf56M0RJg

She'd be stupid to give it up. I have to imagine the residuals give her more money than they can offer, it lets her keep influencing things, and it gives her cultural cachet she can use for her lunacy.

If she does sell up, that will make a lot of people happy as they can go back to liking modern Potter stuff without catching flak for Rowling's beliefs.

pegusus123456 posted...

She'd be stupid to give it up. I have to imagine the residuals give her more money than they can offer, it lets her keep influencing things, and it gives her cultural cachet she can use for her lunacy.

JK Rowling has never been influenced by money

She'd be a billionaire if it wasn't for the hundreds of millions she donated to charity.

I really don't see what Warner Bros can offer her to give up her baby. Especially considering she's never had problems signing off on other people doing adapations.

Slightly odd way to put it.

Choosing to sell something isn't 'losing' it.

Breaking News: Disney could lose Star Wars if they decide to sell it!!!!!!!

hitokoriX posted...

If she does sell up, that will make a lot of people happy as they can go back to liking modern Potter stuff without catching flak for Rowling's beliefs.

This is called having literally no principles.

WB wanting to make the next HB* game be live service is supremely idiotic given the landscape.

she should sell it. she has more than enough money to live comfortably and afford a comfortable life for her children and their children. she has left her mark on the world. she can finally retire! :)

The whole Harry Potter fiasco has taught me that corporations are either slightly less amoral than I thought or way more incompetent.

Like in the back of my mind I kept thinking "with this much money on the line, wouldn't it be easier to just have Rowling killed?"

Were_Wyrm posted...

Breaking News: Disney could lose Star Wars if they decide to sell it!!!!!!!

This. Such clickbaity bullshit.

Nintendo could be owned by Microsoft! Insider says Microsoft offered buyout to Nintendo.

PowerMan5000000 posted...

WB wanting to make the next HO game be live service is supremely idiotic given the landscape.

Especially after Suicide Squad mega flopped and Hogwarts Legacy was the best selling game of 2023.

Speaking of Harry Potter nonsense

I know people were upset that there was no Quidditch in Hogwartz Legacy.

But is anyone actually going to buy a dedicated Quidditch game? I can't imagine anyone other than the most fanatical of HP fans and the parents of young children looking for the a christmas present.

DodogamaRayBrst posted...

This is called having literally no principles.

Her current principles are evil. Having no principles would literally be an improvement.

Horrible production company is trying to buy Harry Potter rights from Horrible creator

Harry Potter in Mortal Kombat.

CoyoteTheGreat posted...

Her current principles are evil. Having no principles would literally be an improvement.

I wasn't talking about her.

Compsognathus posted...

The whole Harry Potter fiasco has taught me that corporations are either slightly less amoral than I thought or way more incompetent.

Like in the back of my mind I kept thinking "with this much money on the line, wouldn't it be easier to just have Rowling killed?"

They're ultimately looking at the bottom line; being LGBTQ-friendly has become overall profitable, and Rowling's bullshit must be hurting the brand significantly enough for them to consider buying her out and removing her influence. Still, a good thing done for the wrong reasons is always better than than a bad thing done for the wrong reasons.

DodogamaRayBrst posted...

Speaking of Harry Potter nonsense

I know people were upset that there was no Quidditch in Hogwartz Legacy.

But is anyone actually going to buy a dedicated Quidditch game? I can't imagine anyone other than the most fanatical of HP fans and the parents of young children looking for the a christmas present.

The dedicated Quidditch video game comes out in September I believe. So we'll see how popular it is soon.

masterpug53 posted...

Rowling's bullshit must be hurting the brand significantly enough for them to consider buying her out and removing her influence.

Hogwarts Legacy was the best selling game of last year. They're also making a Harry Potter TV show. It's obvious that people love the franchise, regardless of their views on the author.

Anyway, this whole story is nonsense regardless.

There was also one on the PS1 I believe.

edit ps2

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter:_Quidditch_World_Cup

opopopza posted...

The dedicated Quidditch video game comes out in September I believe. So we'll see how popular it is soon.

Woah, I hadn't heard about that! I loved the old PS2 Quidditch game, so hopefully this one will be fun as well.

How do you make Quidditch work as a game when it revolves around the team scoring petty points until the match winner Chaser catches a Golden Snitch?

It only works for the books and movies to give Harry a way to singlehandedly win at things.

Trelve posted...

Hogwarts Legacy was the best selling game of last year. They're also making a Harry Potter TV show. It's obvious that people love the franchise, regardless of their views on the author.

Anyway, this whole story is nonsense regardless.

Umm, yeah, this wouldn't even be a topic of conversation either way if HP wasn't still a wildly-popular franchise. The point was that, assuming this is true, WB is looking at the bigger picture: barring a hostile far-right takeover of our government, trans support is going to increase and become more profitable, and Rowling is going to inversely get more extreme in her views and be nothing but a fountain of bad press (she might even try to force her anti-trans views into HP media). So it's reasonable to assume that WB is at least weighing their options over whether or not it would be more profitable in the long run to buy her out and negate her influence.

J.K. Rowling needs as much platform as she can because her brain has completely melted around the single issue of hating trans people (women most specifically, but really all of them). J.K. Rowling is the kind of person to name search herself on Twitter so she can publicly attack someone saying something like "care about trans people maybe?" to her audience that is larger than many European countries.

She's never letting go of Harry Potter, because that's the only thing giving her relevance. It's not like any amount of money would matter, she already has fuck you money. But if she's officially separated from the IP, she no longer has anything worthwhile to do.

SHRlKE posted...

There was also one on the PS1 I believe.

edit ps2

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter:_Quidditch_World_Cup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmLt2-GaKtY

It looks repetitive, and it doesn't seem they incorporated the Bludgers.

Honestly, I do think that WB does realize that Rowling has become a net-negative for the franchise. Like obviously it's still extremely popular, but Rowling and her influence actually harms it. WB would like to remove her influence before the harm becomes more substantial.

Also, full rights means WB also isn't sharing the revenue with anyone anymore. Which, given that the franchise is still very popular, is a nice benefit as well.

The word "lose" gives me the impression WB want this to look like they fought her in some way as opposed to the reality that she'll be paid more money than our family trees will ever see.

MisterPengy posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmLt2-GaKtY

It looks repetitive, and it doesn't seem they incorporated the Bludgers.

Quidditch is kind of a ridiculous game to begin with, I'm not sure how it would actually be reproducible without skipping some things here or there.

masterpug53 posted...

So it's reasonable to assume that WB is at least weighing their options over whether or not it would be more profitable in the long run to buy her out and negate her influence.

It's probably in WB's best interest to "officially" separate Rowling from the rest of HP. Hogwarts Legacy's bad press came entirely from being associated with Rowling, even though it had more than one case where it was a pretty direct "we aren't explicitly saying we think Rowling is full of shit, but she's full of shit", including basically letting your character be trans.

Compsognathus posted...

Honestly, I do think that WB does realize that Rowling has become a net-negative for the franchise. Like obviously it's still extremely popular, but Rowling and her influence actually harms it. WB would like to remove her influence before the harm becomes more substantial.

I don't think Rowling really is at risk of being more harm to HP, but rather her refusal to let go of the whole trans thing means she'll bring Harry Potter down with her. And that would be a huge problem for WB.

Proto_Spark posted...

I don't think Rowling really is at risk of being more harm to HP, but rather her refusal to let go of the whole trans thing means she'll bring Harry Potter down with her. And that would be a huge problem for WB.

That's what I mean when I say harming HP. I don't think she's actually going to be writing like openly transphobic official HP material. But she frankly doesn't need to. She just needs to keep being an absolute piece of shit while owning the franchise.

It would be nice to think they don't want the association with Rowling's beliefs, but the reality is that a corporation is always going to benefit from 100% control, giving them the freedom to do things without deferring to the author.

That said, this story seems to be another piece of 'what if' bullshit clickbait.

A properly made Quidditch sim or casual-sim game would be tops.

-Crissaegrim- posted...

How do you make Quidditch work as a game when it revolves around the team scoring petty points until the match winner Chaser catches a Golden Snitch?

It only works for the books and movies to give Harry a way to singlehandedly win at things.

I feel like one easy workaround is to not have a scoreboard show the results until the Snitch is caught. Then the team that catches it gets their 150 points but doesn't know if they won the game until all the points are tallied up.

But I mean you could easily just have the coach keep track of how many Quaffles got through a hoop and tell their seeker to go for it unless you also have a bunch of "secret" points for certain things being done throughout the game that are harder to keep track of, like most enemy players hit in the face with a Bludger.

idk man

Edit: ooh, how about a time limit instead of just ending when the snitch is caught. So you can catch it to pretty much guarantee victory but if you didn't do it within an hour or whatever then it's just whoever had more points wins.

Also

Breaking News: WB buys rights to HP from JKR
*one week later*
Breaking News: Wizarding World at Universal Studios to be shut down as a tax write-off

Trelve posted...

Hogwarts Legacy was the best selling game of last year. They're also making a Harry Potter TV show. It's obvious that people love the franchise, regardless of their views on the author.

Just to add to it, I was at Universal Studios Florida this weekend, and the Harry Potter sections of the parks were, by far, the most heavily trafficked areas.

Regardless of her views, Harry Potter is a license to print money, and WB knows this.

MTRodaba2468 posted...

Just to add to it, I was at Universal Studios Florida this weekend, and the Harry Potter sections of the parks were, by far, the most heavily trafficked areas.

Regardless of her views, Harry Potter is a license to print money, and WB knows this.

This. The whole "Well JK Rowling being a Transphobe is going to hurt the Harry Potter Franchise...eventually!" thing is never going to hold water, simply because the overwhelming majority of Harry Potter fans - myself included - really don't give a flying rats ass about whatever the hell Rowling stands for.

The only way Rowling could actually start to harm the Harry Potter franchise for WB is if she started pushing her transphobic views into the Harry Potter medium, and somehow found a way to enforce those views in all forms of Harry Potter media - which frankly is never going to happen. Even if Rowling were to publish a new book that was little more than a thinly veiled novel of bigotry set in the Wizarding World, the end result would be more harm to her, and not the franchise, as people simply wouldn't purchase the book.

WB wanting to buy out the Harry Potter rights from Rowling has very little, if any at all, to do with Rowling's opinions on the trans community and the fear of what it might have on the franchise, and everything to do about WB not wanting to share profits with the creator, especially with Universal's new park opening up with an entire portion of it dedicated to the Wizarding World, as well as the insane success that Hogwarts Legacy received last year.

Any additional gains the company makes by removing Rowling from the name would simply be icing on the cake for them.

I mean, from everything I can gather, it absolutely DID hurt the franchise.

I dunno. I think theres the risk of people on the internet thinking what they see on a daily basis on social media represents what the majority of people off the internet think. While I disagree with Rowling completely Im not sure theres to cut through to the general public. Thats a shame and I think it should but I dont think it has.

Bladesyphon posted...

WB wanting to buy out the Harry Potter rights from Rowling has very little, if any at all, to do with Rowling's opinions on the trans community and the fear of what it might have on the franchise, and everything to do about WB not wanting to share profits with the creator, especially with Universal's new park opening up with an entire portion of it dedicated to the Wizarding World, as well as the insane success that Hogwarts Legacy received last year.

Its likely both. The amount of damage control that was being run in the lead up to Hogwarts Legacy is something they likely don't want to have to deal with every single time a HP product is released. Separating the product officially from J.K. Rowling is likely a great way to drop all of that. It was never going to make Hogwarts Legacy fail by any stretch, but officially cutting Rowling out is the easiest way to avoid all of this completely unnecessary flak.

It also doesn't help at the same time, Rowling was publicly using the success of this game (which is also loudly decrying her) as vindication for her shit ideals. It's a completely unnecessary huge drag on the IP. Which meant all of the people involved in Hogwarts Legacy had to run a lot of damage control that could have been spent with more productive marketing.

Not to mention, even without the trans stuff, Rowling hasn't been a great boon to HP since the series ended. She insisted on being the primary screenwriter for Fantastic Beasts, and even though the first one showed more HP products should have basically printed money, she wasn't a good screenwriter and it tanked the whole series. The decade before she started her "political" bend, she kept making random retcons she didn't include in the books in sort of a "why aren't you still paying attention to me" kind of thing.

At this point, Rowling is purely a drag on the series. It won't totally sink the franchise, but it's a completely unnecessary hindrance, that will likely cause more problems the longer it goes on for. WB is only interested in their own profits, for sure, but officially separating HP from Rowling is a boost in several different areas.

UnfairRepresent posted...

JK Rowling has never been influenced by money

She'd be a billionaire if it wasn't for the hundreds of millions she donated to charity.

I really don't see what Warner Bros can offer her to give up her baby. Especially considering she's never had problems signing off on other people doing adapations.

she is a billonaire and she lives in a fucking castle

she loves money

DodogamaRayBrst posted...

This is called having literally no principles.

I mean it depends on how you feel. Right now there are many people (lgbt folks included) that like the world and story -- they just aren't cool with JK's beliefs. If she is no longer associated with the product -- isn't it OK for them to like it again? Also I don't really have a dog in this fight -- I don't consume any Potter materials and wouldn't even if she did sell.

AceMos posted...

she is a billonaire and she lives in a fucking castle

she loves money

She has fuck you money now. She can do whatever she wants the rest of her life worry free about her finances, and as a result any additional money doesn't really mean anything beyond number go up.

Rowling likes attention much more, and to do so she needs to hold onto Harry Potter like a vice.

She is way too petty to sell. Shed hold onto it even if she was broke