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Former Warner Bros. Pictures president Lorenzo di Bonaventura recently recalled his bosses' less-than-enthusiastic reaction to him buying the Harry Potter film rights.
Di Bonaventura, who currently produces the Transformers franchise, discussed Warner Bros. senior executives' initial skepticism towards the Harry Potter property in an interview with Collider. "It was interesting because, at the time, some of my boss' reaction was, 'Why are you buying a kid book for a lot of money?'" he said. "And I'm like, 'It's not a kid book, it's an everybody book. It's got a great imagination.' That's what drew me to it."
Di Bonaventura's faith in Harry Potter ultimately paid off, with the eight adaptations of author J.K. Rowling's novels netting Warner Bros. over $7 billion in global ticket sales. The franchise also spawned The Wizarding World: a multimedia enterprise jointly controlled by Rowling and Warner Bros. that includes spinoff movies, theme parks, and video games. The Wizarding World is also set to include a Harry Potter streaming series, which will reboot the movies and is slated to run on Max over a 10-year period.
Who Will Star in the Harry Potter Reboot?
The question on many fans' minds now is who will replace original Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint in the reboot. In a recent report, industry insider Jeff Sneider claimed that Warner Bros. was aiming to cast "more people of color" in the Max series, as a way of addressing complaints about the books and movies' perceived lack of diversity. Sneider added that the Harry Potter reboot could follow the lead of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage play and cast a non-white actor as Hermione Granger, although this appears to be pure speculation on his part.
In the event that the Harry Potter Max series does indeed boast a more diverse line-up of acting talent, it will still have a long way to go to win over some viewers. Notably, a vocal contingent of fans has made it clear that they're planning to boycott the Harry Potter reboot in response to Rowling's controversial stance on trans issues. Rowling herself recently addressed the proposed boycott on Twitter, indicating she's not phased by the negative backlash to the project.
It's currently unclear how involved Rowling will be as one of the Harry Potter reboot's executive producers. HBO's Chairman and CEO of Content Casey Bloys declined to address the subject at the series' announcement event.
All eight Harry Potter movies are currently streaming on Max.
Source: Collider