The Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is apparently pushing a big-screen remake of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
According to a Puck News report, producer Toby Emmerich originally had the concept for a potential two-film adaptation of Cursed Child but J.K. Rowling was not interested. Zaslav is now determined to make it happen.
The plot for Cursed Child begins up nineteen years after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, with Harry Potter, now working at the Ministry of Magic, and his younger son, Albus Severus Potter, ready to enter Hogwarts. The play was favorably received by critics, while Potter fans had reservations about key plot elements.
Moving on to Cursed Child would have been an acknowledgment that Fantastic Beasts wasn’t working, which would have been a difficult pill for Rowling to take given her artistic engagement.
Rowling was almost canceled after she doubled down on anti-transgender remarks, the Potter leads Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson began disassociating themselves from her, and later in 2020, Emmerich fired Johnny Depp from the third Fantastic Beasts after a U.K. court ruled that The Sun’s description of him as a “wife beater” of Amber Heard was substantially true.
Secrets of Dumbledore was released in July and grossed only $405 million on a $200 million production budget, making it the first of Rowling’s 11 films to lose money.
