Think the “Harry Potter” or “The Lord of the Rings” franchises over-extended themselves with those prequel spin-off films? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has once again expressed a desire to double down on his company’s biggest franchise which he sees as being underutilised – specifically those two franchises and DC.
Appearing at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference recently (via The Wrap), he says one of his company’s real strengths is the “great IP that Warner Bros. owns” but the challenge is “that content has been underused”.
That’s when things get confusing – he says the company hasn’t done “long-form Superman” in over ten years and then added: “We haven’t done anything with ‘Harry Potter’ for more than a decade. We haven’t done anything with ‘Lord of the Rings’.”
The last “The Hobbit” film was nine years ago, though Warners has both an animated ‘Rings’ feature film coming shortly and more live-action films planned. Warners aren’t involved in Amazon’s mega-budget “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” series.
“Man of Steel” was a decade ago, but Henry Cavill’s Superman returned multiple times since and “Superman and Lois” is still running on TV. James Gunn will soon relaunch Superman with a solo screen outing in “Superman: Legacy”.
There hasn’t been a new screenwork set in the “Harry Potter” timeline of the original novels since the ‘Potter’ films ended just over a decade ago. Warners’ own “Fantastic Beasts” prequel franchise was cut short with its third film last year, and “Hogwarts Legacy” has dominated the game sphere for a good part of this year. More recently, an HBO series based on the original books was announced earlier this year.
Zaslav adds: “We’ve got to be careful not to overuse the content… we need to deploy our best capital, and we need to do it with the best creative people in the world”.
