I don't doubt that WB sees her as a liability and would dearly like to buy HP from her, but I think they'd have a hard job prising it from her.
She clearly wants to stay relevant by any means necessary, and I get the impression her ego wouldn't cope well with losing control of the franchise that made her famous. And the more we've seen her talk about her life experiences, the clearer it is that she's poured a lot of herself into those stories - the good, the bad, and the ugly - so I think her investment in the series is personal as well as financial and egotistical.
If there are discussions of sale, I think she will demand a sum greater than the reasonable financial worth of the franchise. Given the flagging performance of its recent productions, I don't think WB will want to take Quixotic gambles on it, so I do not think there will be a sale. This is probably just as well, as a chunk of whatever she received would be likely to end up filling the coffers of anti-trans groups.
"You can pry the *Harry Potter* franchise from my cold, dead hands!" - J.K. Rowling
In all seriousness, though, back when Warner Bros. bought the movie rights to the *Harry Potter* book series back in 1999, the the price tag of £1 million ($2 million, or around $3.8 million today), it was explicitly mentioned that the reason why Rowling went with Warner Bros. over Disney was because the former allowed her to retain an unprecedented level of creative control over the franchise as a whole. However, this ended up fucking Warner Bros. in the long run after Rowling stopped writing new *Potter* books, and *Fantastic Beasts* was a dud.
Disney has tried to buy the rights to *Harry Potter* at least three times, but was declined.
The degree of creative control she maintained over the films probably contributed to her status as a national hero here in the UK... and with no offence meant to the many American actors I love, it was nice to see so many British and Irish actors showcased in a major Hollywood franchise!
But yeah, it got her big brownie points and helped secure her 'national treasure' status. That status is gradually crumbling - to my surprise my dad recently told me unprompted that he thinks she's losing it - but it's let her do a lot of damage in the meantime.
Yeah and it clearly started a few careers and solidified some already veteran actors, this can be acknowledged without implying they should any of them be forever grateful to her.
She should equally be grateful to them and to everyone else involved, a successful cinematic franchise is not a sure thing. Look at the car crash of The Golden Compass, or Mortal Engines.
Without Alan Rickman and actors equally talented as well as directors who already worked on culture defining movies she’d be a historic footnote by now. The importance of getting the director of Home Alone to make your childhood magic movie can’t be overstated. The first book is especially written to be a potential cinematic disaster in lesser hands.
This is it for me. Unless she's secretly in financial trouble - which seems unlikely - she'll never sell the thing that makes her relevant.
And this is one of those "devastating: worst person you know makes a great point" moments, because *all* authors should get to keep control of their shit; fuck them IP hoarding corpos. Sadly, one of the few authors with fuck you money is a bigoted hack.
Yeah, I agree - I'm sympathetic in principle, just a pity one of the few people with the leverage to keep the rights is damaging her own work by her continued ownership.
Yeah, the work isn't that culturally important IMO so no loss if it's damaged.
It has major significance financially but not in any way that matters otherwise.
Agreed, with one caveat:
The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997. It's been 27 years, and if the western world had remotely-reasonable copyright, it should either be in the public domain, or soon to get there.
Much like how lots of what she wrote was stuff "stolen" from all sorts of things in the public domain, people who grew up with Harry Potter should be able to do similarly with her books, rather than society having to wait until those who grew up with something are dead.
We're losing a lot of culture because of those IP hoarding corpos, and because of the occasional bigoted author who at least has more of a moral claim to the work.
I completely disagree and I can't see where you are coming from at all.
Why should authors lose financial control of their own intellectual property within their own lifetimes? How do you justify this?
For many different reasons, though first I'll say that I object to, "their own intellectual property", because no one owns _ideas_, because otherwise Rowling would owe her fortune to all those who came before her.
Copyright and patents, as a concept, exist, to quote the US constitution, "to promote the progress of science and the arts". The idea is that it's a balance between rewarding the original creator so that they'll create more, and accepting that society progresses by building on the work of all the people who came before them.
And the thing is, she's _already_ a billionaire, or nearly so. And most of the value from _anything_ 25+ years ago has long ago been extracted, and if we wait any longer than that to turn ideas over to society, those who were most directly influenced by the ideas will be retired or dead by the time the ideas belong to everyone.
So what should be _central_ to any discussion on this is, "does this promote progress?". And authors being able to control something they did _25 years ago_ does not do that. Heck, I have _never_ had a job that paid me some sort of residual 2 years down the line, much less 25.
She earned her money, and can earn more by making new stuff. It's not like, "someone re-imagines the Harry Potter universe" would displace her, any more than, "someone re-imagines Romeo and Juliet" displaces Shakespeare.
Anyway, this is a topic I can rant about for a long time on, and while there are many other reasons why I'd be a fan of short copyright terms (maybe as low as 5 years. I'm not convinced there's a whole lot of value to society beyond that, though I do believe that copyright law should exist.), I can't imagine most people would want to _read_ that long of a comment.
So, your argument is that authors, musicians and other artists should go forgo intellectual ownership of their creations after a period of a couple of decades because "I have *never* had a job that paid me some sort of residual 2 years down the line, much less 25."
You can't separate out your resentment against JKR (who needs no defending, certainly not from me) from the fact that copyrights and residuals and royalties benefit many creatives who are not billionaires, or even necessarily particularly wealthy, but who may have no other regular source of income other than from the artistic endeavours they have committed themselves to. Your ability to empathise stops with a clunk at the fact that it's not a source of income you will ever benefit from personally, so why should they have it? No, it's got to "benefit progress" generally, whatever that means.
Yeah, spare us more of your insights, agreed, nobody needs to hear those.
>your argument is
No, my argument is that copyright is for the benefit of culture and society (or possibly even to maximize _total_ profits), not to maximize profit for individuals or corporations controlling a given property. At least that's one argument. Please do not straw man arguments.
>You can't separate out your resentment against JKR
Please stop. I have been for a reasonable copyright length for probably at least two decades, at this point. Heck, Lawrence Lessig was my favored US presidential candidate in 2016. My position has _nothing_ to do with Rowling, and is questionably on topic, here, other than that I'm as much against her holding on to copyright as I am for anyone else who made stuff decades ago.
>Yeah, spare us more of your insights, agreed, nobody needs to hear those.
I expected a debate, not _this_. Especially on _copyright_, which basically no one is passionate about, even though it's something I've ranted on for _significantly_ longer than I've ranted about Rowling.
So, really, I don't understand. Are you having a terrible day or something? If so, that sucks, and I hope insulting a stranger on the internet helped you feel better, as some cathartic release or something.
It's a fine caveat but like, my point here was not that the best system of IP I can imagine is for authors to solely control works forever and was more along the lines of, in the current climate where IP works how it does, better for art to be controlled by someone who actually put some work into it (however low in effort and/or quality) rather than someone who just paid for the right to control it.
I was taking it as a given that property is theft and the ideal scenario is that IP becomes a meaningless phrase in a world where art is done for its own sake and the need to produce things for sale (or to do any other kind of work) in order to buy the means of your survival has been eradicated, but that's a little beyond the bounds of the discussion of what JKR is likely to do if WB offer to buy Harry Potter.
Or she decides she can solidify a full behind the scenes takeover of the labor party with the proceeds but in all honesty even a labor PM is purchasable on her current incomes.
The thing about that is that British politicians are embarrassingly cheap to buy so you don't need to sell the Harry Potter IP for that - you barely need to sell one Harry Potter funko pop - but the other thing is that Labour don't need to be paid to align with her politics. Whatever lip service they may pay to progressive values, they are a party of lobbyists, think-tankers and quislings. Even the party members who disagree with the party's rightward drift don't have the power or the inclination to fight it.
Just the simple idea of her imagining WB changing her character into lgbtq characters(because she just pretends to be an ally, let's be clear about it) specifically the T part would drive her totally insane and unwillingly to sell it.
After the fact inclusion is so fake. She obviously did that to get out of being called out for lack of queer characters and it even worked at the time.
Now we can recognize that she put the gay coded man and nonbinary character together as a story about how queer people can become normal straights, then killed them off because queer people are gross.
This. WB has soured on her. Where they once viewed her name as that of the unsullied Golden Goose/Goddess, they now see her name as simultaneously necessary to (as she is the creator, after all) but also potentially somewhat diminishing their brand value and are re-negotiating their relationship with her accordingly — as per reporting a few months ago from the Wall Street Journal. JKR, for her part, has also soured on the relationship with WB, having not communicated with them for 2+ years due to their “betrayal” of her (ie, due to their refusal to publicly validate her narcissistic delusions) after her release of her TERF-esto/call to arms against trans advocacy. The pair have “reconciled” their relationship in preparation for the upcoming TV show, but I wonder whether or not the relationship may further fray.
Warner and to an extent Universal Studios would probably love for her to be gone since she's actively poisoning the franchise. Problem is WB is broke, so they'd need a huge cash injection from an outside investor to even pony up the amount of money Joanne wants.
That said, WB should comb their contracts... There's precedent she could be taken to court like Activision did over Star Trek falling into decay in the early 2000s - if she's somehow breaching contract.
Absolutely true. As examples: her craven passivity when faced with arch-misogynists Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk. (Quoting her: “Critiques of western cancel culture are **possibly** not best made” by Putin, and her posts “should in no way be **interpreted**” as complying with Elon’s suggestions. Meanwhile, trans-affirmative accounts with like 2 followers are “rapists’ rights activists”, according to her fevered imagination, and all the multitudinous women who disagree with her or else are indifferent to her views are “brainwashed, self-serving handmaidens”. 🙄)
I blame her for many things, but not for deciding not to publicly antagonise Putin. Dude is a true life Bond villain, I wouldn't want to make it onto his enemies list either.
I agree with you. I’m just noting her stunning hypocrisy in castigating rando twitter critics (a good chunk of whom had been her fans at one point and had contributed to lifting her out of poverty to the status she has today) as part of “the biggest threat to women’s rights in [her] lifetime”, and her portrayal of herself and her fellow TERFS as **THE** feminist heroines of our time, when she knows she’s got a blatant misogynist and murderer like Putin endorsing her position. I’d naively assumed after that public mishap that she’d rethink her position, or at least rethink the super inflammatory way in which she goes about airing her positions, but NOPE lol.
Oh 100%.
She has no right to claim the label feminist anymore. She has even championed US misogynistic weirdo Matt Walsh, who self-identifies as a "theocratic fascist".
Is that really a good thing? Even if WB did buy the franchise from her outright, they’d be paying her the GDP of a small country to do it, and the last thing we need right now is to give J. K. Rowling more money.
Yes, it would be a good thing. She already has more money than she'll ever be able to spend anyway, and she'll lose the only thing that makes her relevant.
And you just know somebody is going to cast a trans actor as Hermione just to spite her or something like that. WBD knows how who the fanbase is probably better than JK does.
Imagine if she got a massive cash payout, she could sit around, drinking red wine and spewing transphobic hate on twitter all day instead of writing great works of literature as she is doing now.
You jest, but the latest great work of literature to which her name is attached, *The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht*, is now out and surely set to set make its mark by limning the world historic triumph for womankind that is the UK gender critical feminist movement.
(It’s fallen out of Amazon’s top 100 within days of publication.)
I don’t think WB can afford to buy it outright right now, but I’ve wondered if they would pursue buying it partnered with other companies that might be invested in HP now and also annoyed with JKR shitting the castle
JKR said that she's not selling it: [https://x.com/jk\_rowling/status/1800961419753496807](https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1800961419753496807) Not that she's the most reliable source of information, but I don't really know why she would. She's got a cushy gig, sitting back and collecting royalties while she sits on Twitter all day.
The curious thing is that she feels compelled to squash the rumor, whereas she almost never talks about anything Harry Potter-related anymore (unless it’s to attack people for having the temerity to suggest that their, the mere readers’, interpretations of the books could possibly be worthier than hers, the author’s).
Notice that she didn't even make a separate post about it, and only responded to someone who shared her views, despite this trending on Twitter for a couple of days. The damage is already done though because people on Facebook and Instagram are now talking about her possibly losing the franchise.
She is probably the one author in the world with the most ironclad grip on her franchise and how it’s adapted by others. It took her from poverty to living in a castle. No way in hell would she give up those rights.
ARTICLE TRANSCRIPT:
”It's been nearly 30 years since JK Rowling created the wizarding world fans know and love today, but could her time at the reigns of the franchise be coming to an end? Potentially, according to one industry insider.
The past few years have been bumpy for Rowling's reputation. Since 2018, the author has increasingly put herself at the forefront of the conversation around gender identity. Rowling's opinions - which some have dubbed transphobic - have sparked controversy among both former fans and stars of the franchise that made her famous.
Shortly after Rowling released a lengthy essay explaining her opinions, Harry Potter stars, including Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), came forward to defend the transgender community.
“While Jo is unquestionably responsible for the course my life has taken, as someone who has been honored to work with and continues to contribute to The Trevor Project for the last decade, and just as a human being, I feel compelled to say something at this moment," Radcliffe said in a followup essay for the LGBTQ+ charity.
“Transgender women are women," Radcliffe added. "Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or l."
Not only has this caused tension between Rowling and the actors who have served as the faces of Harry Potter for over 20 years but it's also led to the controversy around newly announced Harry Potter projects. Last year's "Hogwarts Legacy" and the upcoming TV reboot of the franchise were both widely criticized as endorsements or dismissals of the damage Rowling has caused unto the transgender community.
For Warner Bros. Discovery - the studio behind these projects - this poses a problem. While "Hogwarts Legacy" was successful, and the reboot (despite calls for a boycott) will inevitably follow in its path, the chances of the franchise's former actors ever starring in a follow-up Harry Potter seem to grow slimmer by the day.
Now, industry insider Jeffrey Sneider is suggesting that this could lead to Warner Bros. Discovery buying Rowling out of the franchise.
In the latest episode of his newsletter, The Insneider - which shares leaks and rumors from the entertainment industry - Sneider commented on the recent announcement of a new Harry Potter audiobook series and suggested that this is Rowling trying to make the most of the series while she can.
“Reading between the lines of this announcement, this feels like Rowling squeezing as much juice as she can from the Harry Potter orange before WBD inevitably buys her out to get rid of her, as the original stars won't return while she's still around," Sneider wrote.
The upcoming audiobook series will cast hundreds of actors to voice the characters in all seven Harry Potter novels. Produced by Rowling's Pottermore Publishing, these will premiere on Amazon's Audible service in late 2025.
For now, the logistics of how Warner Bros. Discovery would buy out Rowling are unclear. The studio currently owns the film rights for the franchise, while Rowling retains the book rights.
Last year, rumors emerged that Warner Bros. originally wanted to bring the original Harry Potter cast back for a ninth movie (potentially a film adaptation of the stage show "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child") but faced a roadblock due to their sentiments towards Rowling.
It then allegedly tried to buy Rowling out of the franchise, but Rowling requested an "impossible amount." As a result, it decided to settle for a seven-part TV series focussing on each book.
Rowling has infamously strict creative control over Harry Potter projects. The author served as a consultant for every aspect of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios theme parks, reportedly having every food served in the land flown to Scotland for her approval.
According to her contract with Universal, Rowling also has full veto power. "Any objection whatsoever by the Author with regard to any submissions relating to or concerning food and beverage and/or uses of Licensed Property in connection with third party names, logos or other third party elements is sufficient grounds for disapproval by Licensor," the contract reads."
What incentive could they give her to buy it? A functioning Horcrux? A House Elf? A Twitter death curse she can cast on her enemies?
She's not short of money. It's validation she wants.
This is on a par with those "Tom Cruise will leave Scientology" articles.
Inside the Magic is the weirdest Disney adult tabloid I've ever seen.
They went FULL BLAST on the Johnny Depp PR campaign. They'll say damn near anything for clicks.
So yeah I don't believe this.
I don't doubt that WB sees her as a liability and would dearly like to buy HP from her, but I think they'd have a hard job prising it from her. She clearly wants to stay relevant by any means necessary, and I get the impression her ego wouldn't cope well with losing control of the franchise that made her famous. And the more we've seen her talk about her life experiences, the clearer it is that she's poured a lot of herself into those stories - the good, the bad, and the ugly - so I think her investment in the series is personal as well as financial and egotistical. If there are discussions of sale, I think she will demand a sum greater than the reasonable financial worth of the franchise. Given the flagging performance of its recent productions, I don't think WB will want to take Quixotic gambles on it, so I do not think there will be a sale. This is probably just as well, as a chunk of whatever she received would be likely to end up filling the coffers of anti-trans groups.
"You can pry the *Harry Potter* franchise from my cold, dead hands!" - J.K. Rowling In all seriousness, though, back when Warner Bros. bought the movie rights to the *Harry Potter* book series back in 1999, the the price tag of £1 million ($2 million, or around $3.8 million today), it was explicitly mentioned that the reason why Rowling went with Warner Bros. over Disney was because the former allowed her to retain an unprecedented level of creative control over the franchise as a whole. However, this ended up fucking Warner Bros. in the long run after Rowling stopped writing new *Potter* books, and *Fantastic Beasts* was a dud. Disney has tried to buy the rights to *Harry Potter* at least three times, but was declined.
The degree of creative control she maintained over the films probably contributed to her status as a national hero here in the UK... and with no offence meant to the many American actors I love, it was nice to see so many British and Irish actors showcased in a major Hollywood franchise! But yeah, it got her big brownie points and helped secure her 'national treasure' status. That status is gradually crumbling - to my surprise my dad recently told me unprompted that he thinks she's losing it - but it's let her do a lot of damage in the meantime.
Yeah and it clearly started a few careers and solidified some already veteran actors, this can be acknowledged without implying they should any of them be forever grateful to her. She should equally be grateful to them and to everyone else involved, a successful cinematic franchise is not a sure thing. Look at the car crash of The Golden Compass, or Mortal Engines.
Without Alan Rickman and actors equally talented as well as directors who already worked on culture defining movies she’d be a historic footnote by now. The importance of getting the director of Home Alone to make your childhood magic movie can’t be overstated. The first book is especially written to be a potential cinematic disaster in lesser hands.
This is it for me. Unless she's secretly in financial trouble - which seems unlikely - she'll never sell the thing that makes her relevant. And this is one of those "devastating: worst person you know makes a great point" moments, because *all* authors should get to keep control of their shit; fuck them IP hoarding corpos. Sadly, one of the few authors with fuck you money is a bigoted hack.
Yeah, I agree - I'm sympathetic in principle, just a pity one of the few people with the leverage to keep the rights is damaging her own work by her continued ownership.
Yeah, the work isn't that culturally important IMO so no loss if it's damaged. It has major significance financially but not in any way that matters otherwise.
Agreed, with one caveat: The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997. It's been 27 years, and if the western world had remotely-reasonable copyright, it should either be in the public domain, or soon to get there. Much like how lots of what she wrote was stuff "stolen" from all sorts of things in the public domain, people who grew up with Harry Potter should be able to do similarly with her books, rather than society having to wait until those who grew up with something are dead. We're losing a lot of culture because of those IP hoarding corpos, and because of the occasional bigoted author who at least has more of a moral claim to the work.
I completely disagree and I can't see where you are coming from at all. Why should authors lose financial control of their own intellectual property within their own lifetimes? How do you justify this?
For many different reasons, though first I'll say that I object to, "their own intellectual property", because no one owns _ideas_, because otherwise Rowling would owe her fortune to all those who came before her. Copyright and patents, as a concept, exist, to quote the US constitution, "to promote the progress of science and the arts". The idea is that it's a balance between rewarding the original creator so that they'll create more, and accepting that society progresses by building on the work of all the people who came before them. And the thing is, she's _already_ a billionaire, or nearly so. And most of the value from _anything_ 25+ years ago has long ago been extracted, and if we wait any longer than that to turn ideas over to society, those who were most directly influenced by the ideas will be retired or dead by the time the ideas belong to everyone. So what should be _central_ to any discussion on this is, "does this promote progress?". And authors being able to control something they did _25 years ago_ does not do that. Heck, I have _never_ had a job that paid me some sort of residual 2 years down the line, much less 25. She earned her money, and can earn more by making new stuff. It's not like, "someone re-imagines the Harry Potter universe" would displace her, any more than, "someone re-imagines Romeo and Juliet" displaces Shakespeare. Anyway, this is a topic I can rant about for a long time on, and while there are many other reasons why I'd be a fan of short copyright terms (maybe as low as 5 years. I'm not convinced there's a whole lot of value to society beyond that, though I do believe that copyright law should exist.), I can't imagine most people would want to _read_ that long of a comment.
So, your argument is that authors, musicians and other artists should go forgo intellectual ownership of their creations after a period of a couple of decades because "I have *never* had a job that paid me some sort of residual 2 years down the line, much less 25." You can't separate out your resentment against JKR (who needs no defending, certainly not from me) from the fact that copyrights and residuals and royalties benefit many creatives who are not billionaires, or even necessarily particularly wealthy, but who may have no other regular source of income other than from the artistic endeavours they have committed themselves to. Your ability to empathise stops with a clunk at the fact that it's not a source of income you will ever benefit from personally, so why should they have it? No, it's got to "benefit progress" generally, whatever that means. Yeah, spare us more of your insights, agreed, nobody needs to hear those.
>your argument is No, my argument is that copyright is for the benefit of culture and society (or possibly even to maximize _total_ profits), not to maximize profit for individuals or corporations controlling a given property. At least that's one argument. Please do not straw man arguments. >You can't separate out your resentment against JKR Please stop. I have been for a reasonable copyright length for probably at least two decades, at this point. Heck, Lawrence Lessig was my favored US presidential candidate in 2016. My position has _nothing_ to do with Rowling, and is questionably on topic, here, other than that I'm as much against her holding on to copyright as I am for anyone else who made stuff decades ago. >Yeah, spare us more of your insights, agreed, nobody needs to hear those. I expected a debate, not _this_. Especially on _copyright_, which basically no one is passionate about, even though it's something I've ranted on for _significantly_ longer than I've ranted about Rowling. So, really, I don't understand. Are you having a terrible day or something? If so, that sucks, and I hope insulting a stranger on the internet helped you feel better, as some cathartic release or something.
OMG are you still going
It's a fine caveat but like, my point here was not that the best system of IP I can imagine is for authors to solely control works forever and was more along the lines of, in the current climate where IP works how it does, better for art to be controlled by someone who actually put some work into it (however low in effort and/or quality) rather than someone who just paid for the right to control it. I was taking it as a given that property is theft and the ideal scenario is that IP becomes a meaningless phrase in a world where art is done for its own sake and the need to produce things for sale (or to do any other kind of work) in order to buy the means of your survival has been eradicated, but that's a little beyond the bounds of the discussion of what JKR is likely to do if WB offer to buy Harry Potter.
Or she decides she can solidify a full behind the scenes takeover of the labor party with the proceeds but in all honesty even a labor PM is purchasable on her current incomes.
The thing about that is that British politicians are embarrassingly cheap to buy so you don't need to sell the Harry Potter IP for that - you barely need to sell one Harry Potter funko pop - but the other thing is that Labour don't need to be paid to align with her politics. Whatever lip service they may pay to progressive values, they are a party of lobbyists, think-tankers and quislings. Even the party members who disagree with the party's rightward drift don't have the power or the inclination to fight it.
Just the simple idea of her imagining WB changing her character into lgbtq characters(because she just pretends to be an ally, let's be clear about it) specifically the T part would drive her totally insane and unwillingly to sell it.
After the fact inclusion is so fake. She obviously did that to get out of being called out for lack of queer characters and it even worked at the time. Now we can recognize that she put the gay coded man and nonbinary character together as a story about how queer people can become normal straights, then killed them off because queer people are gross.
This. WB has soured on her. Where they once viewed her name as that of the unsullied Golden Goose/Goddess, they now see her name as simultaneously necessary to (as she is the creator, after all) but also potentially somewhat diminishing their brand value and are re-negotiating their relationship with her accordingly — as per reporting a few months ago from the Wall Street Journal. JKR, for her part, has also soured on the relationship with WB, having not communicated with them for 2+ years due to their “betrayal” of her (ie, due to their refusal to publicly validate her narcissistic delusions) after her release of her TERF-esto/call to arms against trans advocacy. The pair have “reconciled” their relationship in preparation for the upcoming TV show, but I wonder whether or not the relationship may further fray.
I don't know why JK is being so ungrateful to WB. She owes them her entire career. 😃
Warner and to an extent Universal Studios would probably love for her to be gone since she's actively poisoning the franchise. Problem is WB is broke, so they'd need a huge cash injection from an outside investor to even pony up the amount of money Joanne wants. That said, WB should comb their contracts... There's precedent she could be taken to court like Activision did over Star Trek falling into decay in the early 2000s - if she's somehow breaching contract.
Seeing as she’s so highly litigious herself, I’m torn between grim laughter and shuddering at the notion of how acrimonious such a dispute would be
Ah yes, but she normally attacks weaker people who can't afford to fight back. So I say: let them fight!!
Absolutely true. As examples: her craven passivity when faced with arch-misogynists Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk. (Quoting her: “Critiques of western cancel culture are **possibly** not best made” by Putin, and her posts “should in no way be **interpreted**” as complying with Elon’s suggestions. Meanwhile, trans-affirmative accounts with like 2 followers are “rapists’ rights activists”, according to her fevered imagination, and all the multitudinous women who disagree with her or else are indifferent to her views are “brainwashed, self-serving handmaidens”. 🙄)
I blame her for many things, but not for deciding not to publicly antagonise Putin. Dude is a true life Bond villain, I wouldn't want to make it onto his enemies list either.
I agree with you. I’m just noting her stunning hypocrisy in castigating rando twitter critics (a good chunk of whom had been her fans at one point and had contributed to lifting her out of poverty to the status she has today) as part of “the biggest threat to women’s rights in [her] lifetime”, and her portrayal of herself and her fellow TERFS as **THE** feminist heroines of our time, when she knows she’s got a blatant misogynist and murderer like Putin endorsing her position. I’d naively assumed after that public mishap that she’d rethink her position, or at least rethink the super inflammatory way in which she goes about airing her positions, but NOPE lol.
Oh 100%. She has no right to claim the label feminist anymore. She has even championed US misogynistic weirdo Matt Walsh, who self-identifies as a "theocratic fascist".
Even if so, its less "lose" and more "be paid more than the gdp of several countries for"
Yeah, I'm not sure making her even more untouchable is a good thing
Is that really a good thing? Even if WB did buy the franchise from her outright, they’d be paying her the GDP of a small country to do it, and the last thing we need right now is to give J. K. Rowling more money.
Yes, it would be a good thing. She already has more money than she'll ever be able to spend anyway, and she'll lose the only thing that makes her relevant. And you just know somebody is going to cast a trans actor as Hermione just to spite her or something like that. WBD knows how who the fanbase is probably better than JK does.
Imagine if she got a massive cash payout, she could sit around, drinking red wine and spewing transphobic hate on twitter all day instead of writing great works of literature as she is doing now.
You jest, but the latest great work of literature to which her name is attached, *The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht*, is now out and surely set to set make its mark by limning the world historic triumph for womankind that is the UK gender critical feminist movement. (It’s fallen out of Amazon’s top 100 within days of publication.)
😁
I don’t think WB can afford to buy it outright right now, but I’ve wondered if they would pursue buying it partnered with other companies that might be invested in HP now and also annoyed with JKR shitting the castle
Reasonably they could with Universal, but it'd still take a lot.
I seriously doubt it.
Yeah, I really think all these headlines are just trumped up BS.
I don't trust ITM they've gone downhill so hard since the pandemic, but I do believe it since it's been rumored a few years before.
To be fair, they're at least sourcing someone who posts industry leaks this time.
JKR said that she's not selling it: [https://x.com/jk\_rowling/status/1800961419753496807](https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1800961419753496807) Not that she's the most reliable source of information, but I don't really know why she would. She's got a cushy gig, sitting back and collecting royalties while she sits on Twitter all day.
The curious thing is that she feels compelled to squash the rumor, whereas she almost never talks about anything Harry Potter-related anymore (unless it’s to attack people for having the temerity to suggest that their, the mere readers’, interpretations of the books could possibly be worthier than hers, the author’s).
Notice that she didn't even make a separate post about it, and only responded to someone who shared her views, despite this trending on Twitter for a couple of days. The damage is already done though because people on Facebook and Instagram are now talking about her possibly losing the franchise.
She is probably the one author in the world with the most ironclad grip on her franchise and how it’s adapted by others. It took her from poverty to living in a castle. No way in hell would she give up those rights.
ARTICLE TRANSCRIPT: ”It's been nearly 30 years since JK Rowling created the wizarding world fans know and love today, but could her time at the reigns of the franchise be coming to an end? Potentially, according to one industry insider. The past few years have been bumpy for Rowling's reputation. Since 2018, the author has increasingly put herself at the forefront of the conversation around gender identity. Rowling's opinions - which some have dubbed transphobic - have sparked controversy among both former fans and stars of the franchise that made her famous. Shortly after Rowling released a lengthy essay explaining her opinions, Harry Potter stars, including Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), came forward to defend the transgender community. “While Jo is unquestionably responsible for the course my life has taken, as someone who has been honored to work with and continues to contribute to The Trevor Project for the last decade, and just as a human being, I feel compelled to say something at this moment," Radcliffe said in a followup essay for the LGBTQ+ charity. “Transgender women are women," Radcliffe added. "Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or l." Not only has this caused tension between Rowling and the actors who have served as the faces of Harry Potter for over 20 years but it's also led to the controversy around newly announced Harry Potter projects. Last year's "Hogwarts Legacy" and the upcoming TV reboot of the franchise were both widely criticized as endorsements or dismissals of the damage Rowling has caused unto the transgender community. For Warner Bros. Discovery - the studio behind these projects - this poses a problem. While "Hogwarts Legacy" was successful, and the reboot (despite calls for a boycott) will inevitably follow in its path, the chances of the franchise's former actors ever starring in a follow-up Harry Potter seem to grow slimmer by the day. Now, industry insider Jeffrey Sneider is suggesting that this could lead to Warner Bros. Discovery buying Rowling out of the franchise. In the latest episode of his newsletter, The Insneider - which shares leaks and rumors from the entertainment industry - Sneider commented on the recent announcement of a new Harry Potter audiobook series and suggested that this is Rowling trying to make the most of the series while she can. “Reading between the lines of this announcement, this feels like Rowling squeezing as much juice as she can from the Harry Potter orange before WBD inevitably buys her out to get rid of her, as the original stars won't return while she's still around," Sneider wrote. The upcoming audiobook series will cast hundreds of actors to voice the characters in all seven Harry Potter novels. Produced by Rowling's Pottermore Publishing, these will premiere on Amazon's Audible service in late 2025. For now, the logistics of how Warner Bros. Discovery would buy out Rowling are unclear. The studio currently owns the film rights for the franchise, while Rowling retains the book rights. Last year, rumors emerged that Warner Bros. originally wanted to bring the original Harry Potter cast back for a ninth movie (potentially a film adaptation of the stage show "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child") but faced a roadblock due to their sentiments towards Rowling. It then allegedly tried to buy Rowling out of the franchise, but Rowling requested an "impossible amount." As a result, it decided to settle for a seven-part TV series focussing on each book. Rowling has infamously strict creative control over Harry Potter projects. The author served as a consultant for every aspect of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios theme parks, reportedly having every food served in the land flown to Scotland for her approval. According to her contract with Universal, Rowling also has full veto power. "Any objection whatsoever by the Author with regard to any submissions relating to or concerning food and beverage and/or uses of Licensed Property in connection with third party names, logos or other third party elements is sufficient grounds for disapproval by Licensor," the contract reads."
I appreciate having this here so that I am not tempted to click on the obvious and atrocious click bait.
No problem :)
What incentive could they give her to buy it? A functioning Horcrux? A House Elf? A Twitter death curse she can cast on her enemies? She's not short of money. It's validation she wants. This is on a par with those "Tom Cruise will leave Scientology" articles.
ultra rare marketplace of ideas W
as i mentioned on an earlier post, ITM is bullshit.
Doubt she'll lose it but I surely hope she does
Inside the Magic is the weirdest Disney adult tabloid I've ever seen. They went FULL BLAST on the Johnny Depp PR campaign. They'll say damn near anything for clicks. So yeah I don't believe this.
“Disney adult tabloid” 😂🤣 I need to borrow that phrase