The Fantastic Beasts franchise may have crashed and burned in the box office after The Secrets of Dumbledore, and WB Pictures is currently looking at a new way to approach their billion-dollar IP. Word has it that WB head David Zaslav wants to bring back Harry Potter in the big screen, and a new rumor is going around that we could be looking at a reboot, complete with a new cast.
This comes from @wdwpro1:
https://twitter.com/wdwpro1/status/1606424616607547392
It’s worth noting that we should take this news with a grain of salt. The source did promise an update the following day, but as of now, we still have nothing.
If anything, the piece of news is sort of believable. It has been said that Zaslav was looking to bring back the character of Harry Potter, and a reboot could very much be their solution. With the last movie coming out back in 2011, I’m sure enough time has passed for fans to want to come back to the character after all these years.
On the other hand, we have been getting our Wizarding World fix with the Fantastic Beasts films (regardless of how you like them), and with the original Potter films being considered as universally beloved, rebooting the franchise could risk losing existing fans over the promise of gaining new ones.
Personally, I was fine with the spinoff route with movies just set in the world without the need for focusing on Harry and friends. The Fantastic Beasts franchise just took a major misstep when it decided to focus on legacy characters like Dumbledore and dug itself in a hole where the protagonist Newt ended up being a side character in his own films.
We don’t know what WB has in store for Harry Potter, but hopefully they find a route soon.
