“After Potter, Warner Bros. seeks more magic”
What to do after you lose a $5B movie franchise? That’s what Warner Bros. has to figure out after the final installment of Harry Potter cycles through its well-oiled distribution pipeline. A good article from MSNBC on the studio’s situation:
The Harry Potter franchise has, to date, earned the Time Warner division $2 billion in box office receipts plus an additional $1.5 billion in DVD, Blu-Ray and VHS sales in the United States alone, according to an IHS Screen Digest analysis of data from Box Office Mojo. The worldwide box office already is a whopping $4.3 billion, and analysts predict that the latest movie could add another $1 billion to the total, more than any previous movie in the series.
— —
By the time movie negotiations were taking place, Rowling almost certainly had enough clout that she was able to hang onto certain crucial rights, says Jeff Bock, a box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co.
That is why Warner Bros. can’t crank out Harry Potter sidekick spinoffs, prequels or TV shows to milk the franchise even further. The studio probably won’t let that happen again, Bock says.
“The real money is in the longevity of these characters,” Bock says. “That’s something they have to lock down in the contract, and most struggling artists will probably sell that,” he predicts. “They’ll definitely want to get a handle on exploiting that in the future.”
— —
Even if Warner Bros. is successful in recycling Harry Potter, it still has to find a new tentpole franchise. Bock says the likeliest place for the studio to look is in its stable of DC Comics characters.
“Warner really needs to figure this out and get Wonder Woman and the Justice League on track,” he says. “They have what most studios want in these great superhero characters. They’re sitting on a gold mine if they can make it work.”
But then the killer quote:
“Superheroes are Hollywood safety nets,” says Bock. “They just continue to make money no matter who they put in the suits.”
That is Hollywood conventional wisdom speaking. Hard to argue with the success of Harry Potter. But superheroes “just continue to make money no matter who they put in the suits”? Didn’t we just go through some facts recently which suggest otherwise?
But the studio has got to get its franchise fix. It’s like an addiction. And there is no cure. Franchises are the safest bet with the biggest upside. And chasing after them clouds judgment. To equate superhero movies with Harry Potter? Apart from the pyrotechnics, there is no comparison. HP is a one-time phenomenon. It’s like when God reached down and anointed the production of the movie Casablanca. Or the ’69 Mets. A dollop of creative grace splashed down on Rowling in that coffee shop and boom — HP was born.
HP is the equivalent of a literary miracle.
And Wonder Woman is going to somehow slot right in to fill the void?
All I have to say is Avada Kedavra!
For more of the article, go here.
Comment Archive