After years of playing coy with the fact that one of its biggest money-making brands was the (cursed) brainchild of a person who’s spent the last four years transforming her brand from “Hehe, guess which wizard’s birthday it is today!” to the generalized spewing of transphobic rhetoric, Warner Bros. Discovery has gone ahead and embraced the J.K. Rowling of it all. The entertainment giant issued a statement today on Rowling’s involvement with the Harry Potter TV show it’s currently cooking up, writing that, “J.K. Rowling has a right to express her personal views. We will remain focused on the development of the new series, which will only benefit from her involvement.”
Unlike many of the stars of the Harry Potter film franchise—including leads Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, and Eddie Redmayne, all of whom have spoken out in favor of trans rights and expressed their disappointment with the author’s turn toward her current obsessions—Warner Bros. has very carefully never spoken out against Rowling, whose belief that trans men are women, and trans women are men, has completely subsumed any other aspects of her online presence since roughly 2020. (Variety did a helpful little breakdown, showing that literally 99 percent of the author’s social media activity in recent months has been about the topic.) In the past—as with Harry Potter video game Hogwarts Legacy—the most the company has done is say Rowling wasn’t involved in a project, presumably in hopes that the many people repulsed by her statements (many of whom were, ironically, raised on the inclusive values at least ostensibly promoted by the Potter books) would still shell out some cash for the products. Now, though, the company—which, under David Zaslav’s IP-obsessive leadership, has gone hard to milk more money out of one of its most profitable brands, most notably with this upcoming TV series—is signaling not just leery acceptance, but an active embrace of her “involvement.”
We try to avoid phrases like “cowardly” and “shit-hearted” while writing news pieces like this, so instead we’ll just note that the only real difference between what WBD was doing a week ago—when it was continuing to profit mightily off of Rowling’s work via films, theme parks, games, merchandising, and more—and now is that it’s admitting the tacit support it’s always given her, despite her “personal views.” (If you want to draw parallels between that admission, and a current political moment that sees fear-stricken Democrats blaming progressive support for trans people as a reason Kamala Harris lost this year’s election—as opposed to any one of dozens of other factors—hey, we certainly can’t stop you.) The fact is, there’s just too much money tied up in Rowling—because you can’t excise her from Harry Potter, it’s undeniably and irrefutably hers—for the corporation to ever actually cut ties. The only question now is who else in Hollywood will be willing to stick their names right up alongside hers—and who will watch whatever it is they end up shoving out into the world together.
[via Variety]
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