Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has expressed his intention to continue franchises J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
Since David Zaslav took over at Warner Bros, he’s made some pretty shocking decisions. On the one hand, Zaslav has come under fire from the audience as well as some big producers by shelving the project citing poor screening of DC’s Batgirl. On the other hand, he also earned praise when Henry Cavill was brought back to the DCU as Superman at the request of Dwayne Johnson.
Zaslav is now sensing the pulse of the audience as to what they want. In this context, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery Most recently mentioned J. K. Rowling’s potential to do something with the Harry Potter franchise during the company’s Q3 earnings call as well as also expressed his intention to continue Lord of the Rings‘ more films.
David Zaslav said that, “We’re going to have a real focus on franchises, if we can do something with J.K. Rowling on ‘Harry Potter‘ going forward. We haven’t had a Superman movie in 13 years. We haven’t done a ‘Harry Potter‘ movie in 15 years. The DC movies and the ‘Harry Potter‘ movies provided a lots of the profits of Warner Bros. Motion Pictures over the last 25 years. So a focus on the franchise, like one of the big advantages that we have, ‘House of the Dragon‘ is an example of that, ‘Game of Thrones‘, taking advantages of ‘Sex and the City‘.”
Showing interest in more films of Lord of the Rings, he says that, “We still have the right to do ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies. What are the movies that have brands that are understood and loved everywhere in the world.”
However, there are currently no Harry Potter projects in development on Warner Bros. The Secrets of Dumbledore, the last installment of the prequel Fantastic Beasts, was released this year. However, it is also worth noting that the prequel Fantastic Beasts series has been seen to be in trouble at the box office. But now there may be an announcement for a Harry Potter movie soon in the near future.
J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, has a lot to do. Maybe the studio will confirm a prequel to this saga as soon as possible.
Obviously, both the franchises have brought huge profits to the studio. Obviously, the 8 films of the Harry Potter series have earned $7.7 billion worldwide at the box office, while their combined budget was $1.2 billion. Last release of the series was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 which came in 2011.
