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‘Harry Potter’, ‘Fantastic Beasts’ Dead as Wizarding World Franchise Reportedly Ends

DKehoe

Gold Member
Not surprising. Those Fantastic Beasts films were no longer delivering in the way they wanted and WB obviously want to make the most of every franchise they have.

I know it was controversial, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them adapt Cursed Child into a film. Specifically because
the time travel element and the characters in it visiting the period during the main series means you can go back to that material and do some Back To The Future 2 type stuff where they're running around in the background of the story people already know and care about. Going back to that period and setting seems more appealing to a wide audience than Harry Potter: The Auror Years or whatever.
 

Fbh

Member
Lol at trying to blame this on the JK Rowling "controversy" and not the fact the fantastic beasts movies were terrible. First one was ok at best, the second one is one of the worst movies I've ever seen so I didn't bother with the third (though from what I've read/seen it was just as bad)

WB will probably regain their interest when the game does really well despite the terrible recent movies and despite all of mainstream gaming media being biased against it.
 
i'm a HUGE harry potter fan and i'm not surprised.

the Fantastic Beast movies are god damn fucking awful and i really tried to get into them. i can't do it.

then there is all the shit with JK Rowling. i don't understand it. she's seemingly hated as a this-phob and that-phob. either she has gone full on jumpy or there is a certain toxic community focused on cancelling her and major companies are afraid of losing money being associated with her. to be fair i don't follow all of her controversies closely. don't have the energy for it and i won't get into it because it's a fucking never ending rabbit hole that i don't wanna go down. all i'll say, from my own personal experience, is that having read the Harry Potter books growing up it taught me to love/forgive people. never to judge them and learn to empathize with them. to me it seems a bit strange that Rowling taught everyone me these lessons in her books but somehow she hates transgender people or whatever the fuck else??? i mean yeah sure it's possible she is but again, from my experience from reading the books, i don't judge people and i accept them for who they are. i have nothing against transgender people at all. it all seems weird to me and that's as far as i'll go.

furthermore, there is the Cursed Child. If Fantastic Beasts turned off the general audience then CC fucked over the book lovers. That fucking thing totally shreds apart the books, takes a huge shit on it, and then sets it on fire. I hate Cursed Child and the only time i acknowledge its existence is so that i can shit on it. Get it so far to fuck!

all that said, i think there is still a place for HP. maybe in 10-20 years we'll get a reboot of the movies based on the books. society will change (hopefully for the better) and i'm sure someone will be willing to take a shot on the HP movies. but yeah i wouldn't be surprised if everything HP is done for now.

and finally...i'm happy as long as i have books 1-7. that's all i need. nothing will change how i feel about them.
 

Trunx81

Member
The first movie was ok, the rest was just dumb. The audience is not stupid and reward shitty films by not watching them. Case closed.

A new HP series? “Somehow Voldemort has returned”? No thanks.

But what would be great: IGN did an April fools trailer years ago for an Auror show. That could actually work!
 
The first movie was ok, the rest was just dumb. The audience is not stupid and reward shitty films by not watching them. Case closed.

A new HP series? “Somehow Voldemort has returned”? No thanks.

But what would be great: IGN did an April fools trailer years ago for an Auror show. That could actually work!
Harry Potter's story, the character, is over and has been for 15 years now.

Cursed Child tried to keep it going and that was a fucking wreck. While Harry isn't the main character in it, it focuses on his kid and deals with shit that apparently happened during books 1-7.

There will never be another Harry Potter story unless JK Rowling makes one set before/between the events of book 1-7. That doesn't make sense and neither does one before or after. She could also do a story based on other characters. Fans have been screaming for a Marauder's story for years (if you only watched the movies you won't really know what they are and no it's not just a map).

What they were trying to go for was building a franchise based on the world Harry lives in. There are/should have been side characters or new ones to explore. The fantastic beasts movies take a character that was mentioned maybe 2-3 times throughout books 1-7 and try to flesh him (Newt) out. That hasn't worked. The upcoming game looks like it is set long before HP lived and will explore that time with new characters.

There is a lot of potential but it's been fucked up by Warner Bros. They have had the rights over movies and games. Maybe someone else will be willing to buy the rights and treat it better.
 

AJUMP23

Member
I think you could make new Hogwarts movies, or maybe do something with all the Magical schools, but the tough thing about Harry Potter is that in that world Harry Potter is essential to the story. You can have new and varied characters, but you need potter. Voldemort is gone too, so how do you find a new scary evil.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
I really liked fantastic beasts 1 and 2 but then when idiot social media politic arguments became a thing and completely fucked up part 3 .. which actually could have had the best story … I don’t care what happens to the series now.
 

Rran

Member
As someone who really liked most of the books (and thought the movies were fine), I didn't bother with Fantastic Beasts. It just didn't seem like essential watching, some weird spinoff/prequel with a title that didn't feel like a Zelda-ish wonder-filled epic to me.

I could see a new Harry Potter story working in sort of a "Stranger Things" way, where you have two simultaneous plotlines featuring the adults (the older cast) and the kids (newer cast) doing two separate adventures unbeknownst to the other, they intersect in the end, etc. I mean, why not? They could even still call it Harry Potter And The Whatever.

Dunno how that'd mess with Cursed Child canon and stuff, but they could probably just get rid of that entirely if necessary.

I do think they'd need a new villain. Bringing back Voldemort would be kind of lame.
 
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I think you could make new Hogwarts movies, or maybe do something with all the Magical schools, but the tough thing about Harry Potter is that in that world Harry Potter is essential to the story. You can have new and varied characters, but you need potter. Voldemort is gone too, so how do you find a new scary evil.
i don't quite agree with that. i mean yeah sure if you name it HARRY POTTER he has to be in it.

there's nothing wrong with making a "wizarding world" franchise. you can make new characters and come up with a new story. you have a lot of freedom. it can be set before harry's time at hogwarts or after. it doesn't need to be set at hogwarts (scotland/UK) as there are schools in USA, one in northern europe (~norway/sweden/finland), and one in france. shit, you could make up your own school. there is a lot of freedom in the "harry potter" world compared to something like say star wars or marvel.

i mean, the FB movies are "based" on a bloody school textbook. there is a real fantastic beasts book you can buy but it's literally just a collection of magic beasts. all the movies did was take the author (newt) and shit out a story around him while exploring the magical world in the USA/France/Germany
 
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AJUMP23

Member
i don't quite agree with that. i mean yeah sure if you name it HARRY POTTER he has to be in it.

there's nothing wrong with making a "wizarding world" franchise. you can make new characters and come up with a new story. you have a lot of freedom. it can be set before harry's time at hogwarts or after. it doesn't need to be set at hogwarts (scotland/UK) as there are schools in USA, one in northern europe (~norway/sweden/finland), and one in france. shit, you could make up your own school. there is a lot of freedom in the "harry potter" world compared to something like say star wars or marvel.

i mean, the FB movies are "based" on a bloody school textbook. there is a real fantastic beasts book you can buy but it's literally just a collection of magic beasts. all the movies did was take the author (newt) and shit out a story around him while exploring the magical world in the USA/France/Germany
I do think you can connect it tangentially with a making Potter the head of Hogwarts and late in years as a new group of students arrives. Have Herminie as a professor and make Ron the head of the Ministry.

The problem is always the same in Hollywood. I think you can make a story without Harry, but movie makers always want something that the audience knows. That is why they keep setting SW stuff during the Skywalker time period.
 

Fbh

Member
I think you could make new Hogwarts movies, or maybe do something with all the Magical schools, but the tough thing about Harry Potter is that in that world Harry Potter is essential to the story. You can have new and varied characters, but you need potter. Voldemort is gone too, so how do you find a new scary evil.

I think you can make it work without HP or having him more as a supporting character.
I think franchises with interesting worlds and lore like HP or Star Wars would benefit from having more confidence in their worlds and their potential to tell new stories instead of always forcing in the same known characters and events into everything. Yeah people liked the main trio but a big part of the appeal of HP wasn't just the characters but the world, the spells, the creatures, the wizard society, the whole concept of Hogwarts and the various houses, the talking paintings, the ghosts, quidditch, etc

It's not something like, say, Breaking Bad or The Last of Us where the setting is generic and the characters are the main selling point. You can't make a new show set "in the world of breaking bad" but with none of the characters...because then it's just a new unrelated show about drugs and cartels. But Star Wars? Harry Potter? Absolutely.

Just reading through this thread you can see most people thought the first Fantastic Beasts was the best one, and that was the most standalone one that mainly focused on a new cast of characters and stories, it wasn't great but it was decent and they could have build upon it. Instead with the second one a lot of focus shifted to Dumbledore and connecting to he events of the books and it all went to shit
 

AJUMP23

Member
I think you can make it work without HP or having him more as a supporting character.
I think franchises with interesting worlds and lore like HP or Star Wars would benefit from having more confidence in their worlds and their potential to tell new stories instead of always forcing in the same known characters and events into everything. Yeah people liked the main trio but a big part of the appeal of HP wasn't just the characters but the world, the spells, the creatures, the wizard society, the whole concept of Hogwarts and the various houses, the talking paintings, the ghosts, quidditch, etc

It's not something like, say, Breaking Bad or The Last of Us where the setting is generic and the characters are the main selling point. You can't make a new show set "in the world of breaking bad" but with none of the characters...because then it's just a new unrelated show about drugs and cartels. But Star Wars? Harry Potter? Absolutely.

Just reading through this thread you can see most people thought the first Fantastic Beasts was the best one, and that was the most standalone one that mainly focused on a new cast of characters and stories, it wasn't great but it was decent and they could have build upon it. Instead with the second one a lot of focus shifted to Dumbledore and connecting to he events of the books and it all went to shit
You could have the ghost and painting reference things in Harry Potter. I think that would be clever.
 
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NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
First thing producers should understand is what made HP what it is.

Teen fantasy school drama. That’s it.

Of course, Rowling’s lore got a lot more than that, but the major thing for HP was the school daily life that appealed to so many young readers back in the day.
Nah. When they went full throttle with the school drama in the Half-Blood Prince movie they managed to get the worst film out of what was arguably the best book.
School drama is just necessary background noise in HP. Chris Columbus nailed the daily Hogwarts atmosphere 100% with the first two movies, then with the fifth movie Yates went all "mature" (lol) and smeared a piss filter over everything.
 

Tams

Gold Member
two simultaneous plotlines featuring the adults (the older cast)
Aren't all three who played the main characters thoroughly done with it though?

Daniel Radcliffe certainly seems to be. The Weird Al Yankovic comedy biopic he did that just came out even had a stab at it. Emma Watson definitely seems completely over it. So that leaves Rupert Grint, and he's moved on to other things too.
 
Aren't all three who played the main characters thoroughly done with it though?

Daniel Radcliffe certainly seems to be. The Weird Al Yankovic comedy biopic he did that just came out even had a stab at it. Emma Watson definitely seems completely over it. So that leaves Rupert Grint, and he's moved on to other things too.
yeah i think they are all over it. Daniel has tried hard to distance himself from it. Not necessarily in a negative way. I think he recognises that he would never be where he is without the HP movies and of course he is Harry Potter so he got the most attention for a decade of his life... but i think after the movies (or even during them) he didn't want to be forever known as Harry Potter so went out there and made a name for himself outside HP.

Emma, I don't think really cuts it as an actress. She was great as Hermione and had some roles outside HP but she's not really taken off. of the top of my head she's been in 3-4 movies since 2011... (beauty and the beast, little women, perks, bling ring).

Rupert kinda went dark for a long time. he's been in some stuff but nothing major. i think he's been in a couple tv shows as a main role.

i don't think emma would ever go back to HP (she almost quit the movies). doubt Rupert would...i get the feeling he is more than happy enough to never be famous or a celebrity again. Daniel i think might be up for being Harry again but only if he felt he had distanced himself enough from it which i think he has done quite well.
 
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StormCell

Member
Bizarre article considering their CEO just said that he wants to bring back Harry Potter. All JK has to do is write more books.

Fantastic Beasts might be done because the last one flopped.
Repeat a lie enough times and it will become accepted as truth. Those who are upset with Rowling wish so hard for everyone else to care like they do, but the truth is that they're even more fringe than she is with the politics.
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
harry potter ron GIF
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Shoehorning in the Grindewald conflict within the framework of fucking "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", of all things, was a very stupid idea. How is a world-changing historical event like that supposed to revolve around a protagonist (Newt) that we already know from history doesn't even fucking matter? If JK wanted to continue the Grindewald saga, she should have concentrated on that first and foremost. Make Dumbledore the protagonist, not the irrelevant Newt Charmander.

If Potter is dead it is because they made bad movies with fantastic beasts. Not because of JK ROWLING.

I dont think it is dead. Just needs a break. Nothing is ever dead.
JK was the writer of all three movies, and she has a lot of creative control in the franchise. The movies are bad because she wrote bad movies and didn't receive any pushback.

Fantastic Beasts is probably toast, but the Wizarding World franchise will probably recover a little when Hogwarts Legacy releases in February.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Yeah no just the other day WB ceo said they would pursue further movies in this world, this is just wishful thinking from the mighty wokenauts.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Snape seemed pretty gay to me
But didn't he pine for HPs mom and carry a torch for her a decade after her death?

Let's be honest, ALL the adult relationships in HP are pretty twisted or anemic at best. Some of that is, I suppose, due to the child's POV of the books but also just JKs probably jaded view of family life at the time.
 

NecrosaroIII

Ask me about my terrible takes on Star Trek characters
But didn't he pine for HPs mom and carry a torch for her a decade after her death?

Let's be honest, ALL the adult relationships in HP are pretty twisted or anemic at best. Some of that is, I suppose, due to the child's POV of the books but also just JKs probably jaded view of family life at the time.
You're not wrong. But I think there are some positive relationships such as:

The Weasleys
Tonks x Remus Lupin

Hermoine's parents dynamic seems healthy too (probably the least dysfunctional of all the characters).
 

Dural

Member
Nah. When they went full throttle with the school drama in the Half-Blood Prince movie they managed to get the worst film out of what was arguably the best book.
School drama is just necessary background noise in HP. Chris Columbus nailed the daily Hogwarts atmosphere 100% with the first two movies, then with the fifth movie Yates went all "mature" (lol) and smeared a piss filter over everything.

So true, Columbus nailed the atmosphere. It was Alfonso Cuaron that went mature with Prisoner of Azkaban and changed the look of Hogwarts and made it all dark. I can't stand Yates either, but the atmosphere was changed for the rest of the movies after Cuaron.
 

Lord Panda

The Sea is Always Right
Aren't all three who played the main characters thoroughly done with it though?

Daniel Radcliffe certainly seems to be. The Weird Al Yankovic comedy biopic he did that just came out even had a stab at it. Emma Watson definitely seems completely over it. So that leaves Rupert Grint, and he's moved on to other things too.

They should do a Harry Potter movie focusing on Ron Weasley in the same vein as 'Nobody' with Bob Odenkirk. Ron is seemingly stuck in a dead end Ministry job, constantly in the shadow of his famous friend Harry, and his overachiever ex-wife Hermoine. However Ron starts noticing evil bullshit stirring and none of his friends or family, for whatever reason, believe him.
 
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dr_octagon

Banned
Just copy Star Wars

Rey Granger is Emily Blunt.
Kylo Ren-Weasley is Michael Fassbender.
Dumbelldoor is Rock.
R2Dobby is Idris Elba
C3Potter is Christian Bale.
 

4EZCOOLDART

Member
These movies didn't know what they wanted to be. The original premise was interesting but then they totally lost the fantastic beasts and started throwing Dumbledores into the mix.
 
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I knew the Fantastic Beast series went to shit the moment I left the theater for the second one. I quite liked the first one, for what it was.
 

Amiga

Member
No one gives a shit about prequels. The first one was sort of alright but the next two were written by morons. If the writings bad then everything crumbles around it.
A prequel in the age of the original houses would be interesting, but also just as a one off.
I blame G.Lucas for setting the trend of multiple prequels. :messenger_angry:

There is room to explore stories from the other schools.
 

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
The Wizarding World is still a big brand. They still do events for it with the original cast.

She will likely write another book or two and find a new studio to make a movie, especially with Hogwart's Legacy on deck. But that Fantastic Beasts series really was a waste of time. I feel like Rowling kind of phoned those stories in while she worked on her new passion the Cormoran Strike novels.
 

Rran

Member
Aren't all three who played the main characters thoroughly done with it though?

Daniel Radcliffe certainly seems to be. The Weird Al Yankovic comedy biopic he did that just came out even had a stab at it. Emma Watson definitely seems completely over it. So that leaves Rupert Grint, and he's moved on to other things too.
That's true. But personally, I wouldn't mind seeing new actors; the kids were good in their roles but I wouldn't call them particularly iconic or anything. I'd argue that the characters are first and foremost book characters, and could likely be done with recasting without too much of a problem (like James Bond or any number of stage show actors playing roles).
 

Lasha

Member
She will likely write another book or two and find a new studio to make a movie, especially with Hogwart's Legacy on deck. But that Fantastic Beasts series really was a waste of time. I feel like Rowling kind of phoned those stories in while she worked on her new passion the Cormoran Strike novels.

The Cormoran Strike novels are pretty good. I found them by chance during the brief period people didn't know JK Rowling wrote them. I would love to see some of the stories as either a film or limited series.
 

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
The Cormoran Strike novels are pretty good. I found them by chance during the brief period people didn't know JK Rowling wrote them. I would love to see some of the stories as either a film or limited series.

It's a TV show on Cinemax - I think it's on HBO Max in the US. It's pretty good, it follows the books very closely, especially the first season (each season is dedicated to one of the books). It's titled C.B. Strike.
 
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Rayderism

Member
They could have made a pre-trilogy leading up to Harry's parents getting killed. Basically the rise of and (first) fall of Voldemort.
 

Yoboman

Member
JK didn't write the FB movies
Pretty sure she did

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the second screenplay in a five-film series to be written by J.K. Rowling, author of the internationally bestselling Harry Potter books. Set in 1927, a few months after the events of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, and moving from New York to London, Paris and even back to Hogwarts, this story of mystery and magic reveals an extraordinary new chapter in the wizarding world.

https://www.jkrowling.com/book/fantastic-beasts-the-crimes-of-grindelwald/
 
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