Despite The deathly hallows part 2 both released more than a decade ago, Harry Potter remains one of Warner Bros’ most successful franchises, not to mention the books that still enjoy huge success with constant new editions. For this reason it seems that Warner is determined to continue to tell the magical world created by Rowling.
The CFO of Warner Bros. Gunnar Wiedenfelsfor these reasons has expressed the desire to expand the Wizarding World:
Take Harry Potter, for example, the Wizarding World: The fact that we are experiencing the hugely successful launch of Hogwarts Legacy, 12 years after the release of the last film, shows us that there are many opportunities and we just started to expand. We have a Harry Potter tour coming to Tokyo mid-year.
The same Company that recently gave the news of wanting to create new products on the other progenitor of the fantasy genre, The Lord of the Rings, wants to remedy what was the cinematographic flop of the Fantastic Beasts saga: the latter narrates the adventures of the Magi-zoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) and above all of the conflict between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, which was initially supposed to be composed of five movie. Unfortunately, however, the second film, Fantastic Beasts – The Crimes of Grindelwaldtotally divided the audience, so much so that it became the least lucrative product of the whole Wizarding World, then concluding the saga with the third film.
Furthermore, the accusations against Johnny Depp, interpreter of Grindelwald, by his ex-wife Amber Heard, have only helped to bury Fantastic Beasts even more, with the dismissal of the aforementioned actor and with Mads Mikkelsen as a substitute as the character (Hannibal, Doctor Strange).
We just have to wait for new official news between rumors of reboots, spin-offs and sequels, with the awareness that, as told by Warner’s CFO, the Harry Potter cinematic universe has “just started to expand“.