Warner Brothers Discovery Speaks on the Future of ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Lord of the Rings’, and More

Warner Bros. Discovery has made it clear that they’re planning to expand the Harry Potter franchise. 

During an investor call in early November 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav spoke about their desire to make more films.

“We’re going to focus on franchises. We haven’t had a Superman movie in 13 years. We haven’t done a ‘Harry Potter’ in 15 years. The DC movies and the ‘Harry Potter’ movies provided a lot of the profits for Warner Bros… over the past 25 years,” Zaslav stated on the call.

The Future of Harry Potter

The topic came up again this week during a panel at the Morgan Stanley’s investor conference. And the studio once again teased big plans for the franchise – which already spans eight main films and three Fantastic Beasts spin-offs – following the success of new video game Hogwarts Legacy.

“Take ‘Harry Potter‘ as an example, the Wizarding World, the fact that we are enjoying this massive success with the ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ launch, 12 years after the last film came out, shows that there is so much opportunity and we’re only just starting to expand that,” Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said.

“We’ve got the new ‘Harry Potter’ tour coming up in Tokyo in the middle of the year,” Wiedenfels added. “Long story short, I think this one-company approach, great leadership in the individual business units, but coordinated franchise management is probably one of the biggest opportunities the company has.”

The Future of Lord of the Rings

Additionally, Wiedenfels also addressed the recently announced Lord of the Rings films, implying that it would take time on that front.

“David made a promise, quote unquote, very early on to revitalize some of that iconic, tentpole IP. And we’re starting to make progress,” he noted. “It’s exciting to see how people are coming in and out and how the creative community is embracing this opportunity to work with us. That’s going to bear fruit, over time.”

DC Universe

There has been no shortage of big changes over at Warner Brothers over the last year. Another sizable change was the shakeup with the DC Unvierse leadership, which Wiedenfels hailed as “an enormous opportunity” with Peter Safran and James Gunn at the helm.

“DC is an enormous opportunity and two important building blocks are in place now with the leadership team, Peter [Safran] and James [Gunn], and James has been breathing comics for as long as he’s been alive, essentially,” Wiedenfels stated. “A great creative leader here. And the second building block that is in place is the one-company approach. Because I think you can only manage a franchise if everything is coordinated and the team is working together extremely well.”