Warner Bros. Appoints TV Exec to Head Wizarding World Expansion
Rebecca Rubin, writing for Variety:
Warner Bros. executive Tom Ascheim has been promoted and will oversee the studio’s Harry Potter franchise and Wizarding World properties. Ascheim also serves as the president of kids, young adults and classics at Warners. He reports to WarnerMedia chief Ann Sarnoff.
As part of his new responsibilities, Ascheim acts as the chief representative of WarnerMedia in its relationship with author J.K. Rowling and her reps, agent Neil Blair and Blair Partnership Chief Creative Officer James McKnight. He will also be tasked with expanding the Wizarding World property for the studio’s various outlets and platform partners. The studio didn’t make any concrete plans for the future of Harry Potter in Thursday’s announcement.
Lauren Sarner, writing for The New York Post:
Warner Bros. and HBO Max released this killjoy joint statement: “There are no Harry Potter series in development at the studio or on the streaming platform.”
This announcement definitely carries some strong implications, even despite the fact that Warner Brothers has denied any current Harry Potter projects; they could definitely be contemplating something for the future that may not be in development yet. My guess is that they probably want to just wait a while before they announce anything, allowing more time for the outrage surrounding J.K. Rowling over her comments on biological sex and transgenderism to die down a bit before they announce a new project.
I’m super excited for the possibility of a Harry Potter show. It would be a delightful way to give fans fresh content for years to come, if they did seven seasons with roughly one episode per book chapter. But they could really go for a lot more than that: I could see ten seasons with 15-20 episodes each, if they start before book one and don’t equate one book to one season (which I think there’s a strong argument for). I think the best option for a Harry Potter television show would be a more in-depth dive into the books: break out of the tendency to focus on the story from Harry’s perspective, utilize plenty of flashbacks, expand on smaller story lines, etc. Show us scenes that we saw in the books but not the films, and even scenes that were implied in the books but not directly shown (e.g. Hagrid rescuing Harry from Godric’s Hollow, Hermione in the library spotting the basilisk through her mirror, Sirius escaping from Azkaban, Voldemort creating a Horcrux, etc.). Something like Game of Thrones would be great, but I don’t think it needs to be quite as dark or bloody.
They could also be considering more of a spinoff series that still takes place in the Wizarding World, perhaps a “Quidditch Through The Ages” adaptation following the Chudley Cannons (something in the vein of “Ted Lasso” could be fun, with that specific idea), or as mentioned on Mugglecast #498, a Grey’s Anatomy-style drama about the daily goings on at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, or maybe a political drama about the Minister of Magic. There are lots of possibilities for spinoffs, but given how spectacularly the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise is nose diving and the complete disaster that resulted in giving other authors creative control with “Cursed Child,” I think they’d be better off to stick to a more direct adaptation of the books, with J.K. Rowling heavily involved in creating content for the new scenes, but with someone else actually writing the screenplay.