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Look, I do know what you’re pondering. That that is going to be some grand assertion about how Max (the forthcoming rebirth of HBO Max) is green-lighting a brand new Harry Potter collection regardless of objections from those that discover Potter creator J.Okay. Rowling’s views to be transphobic. It’s not. My colleague Jaina Grey already addressed the challenges of adapting Rowling’s work rather more eloquently than I can in her Hogwarts Legacy review. No, this column asks a unique query: Who wants this? 

For those that don’t know, the brand new Harry Potter undertaking that Warner Bros. Discovery announced Wednesday will flip Rowling’s seven Potter novels right into a collection that may run for a decade. All the principle characters shall be recast, and the collection, in principle, will enable Max to adapt the books in additional element than the Warner Bros. characteristic movies did. 

OK, positive. But why? As a Star Wars fan, I get the will to return to your favourite world time and time once more. But this isn’t Max making a brand new collection primarily based on beforehand unexplored characters; it’s Disney+ turning A New Hope right into a season of tv. The eight Potter films that exist already run almost 20 hours as it’s. Sure, some issues had been glossed over or omitted, however followers dying for extra content material even have a Broadway present, a theme park, a online game, and all the Fantastic Beasts movie collection to go to in the event that they actually need extra Wizarding World.   

Truly, that must be sufficient. Yes, as somebody who simply final week wrote that The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a ploy to hook a brand new era of gamers on Mario video games, I get why Warner Bros. Discovery is doing this. But at the least that film tried to create a brand new story. Spending 10 years retelling a narrative that’s already been advised advert nauseam is simply lazy.

It additionally would possibly show troublesome. Many of the actors within the authentic Potter films have since condemned Rowling’s comments about trans folks. Any individual—actor, director, scriptwriter—who indicators on to this new collection will, and will, be requested about Rowling’s views and their involvement in a present she’s an government producer of. 

So perhaps that is about Rowling in any case. Because though this forthcoming collection seems like a retread of fabric that already exists, it’s additionally one which comes from somebody who has made feedback many individuals discover hurtful. When Casey Bloys, content material CEO for HBO and Max CEO, was requested at yesterday’s press occasion whether or not he thought Rowling’s views would make it onerous to rent expertise for the collection, he declined to remark, saying it wasn’t the discussion board to take action. “Obviously, the Harry Potter story is incredibly affirmative and positive and about love and self-acceptance,” he told reporters. “That’s our priority—what’s on screen.”

So, will what’s on the display screen mirror Rowling’s views? Or not? The press launch asserting the present promised that it could be “faithful,” which, Kathryn VanArendonk pointed out on Vulture, all however dooms it to be a boring work “that makes no choices of its own.” If that’s the case, this new collection will simply be a recitation of what’s already been mentioned. And Max would be the discussion board for that.