Summary

• Warner Bros. plans to continue making Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings spinoffs despite the franchises already being overtaxed.
• Warner Bros. Discovery seems to be focused on profit over artistic quality, indicating that both franchises could be run into the ground.
• There is still hope for the franchises if Warner Bros. can find the best creators to tell these stories and produce worthwhile content. However, this must be done carefully to avoid cynical cash-ins and nostalgia trips.

Frustratingly, Lord of the Rings spinoffs despite how overtaxed both franchises already are. Every franchise has a natural endpoint. For some series, this might arrive after a few movies. For others, it will be after numerous films, multiple spinoffs, and a television series. However, even sprawling sagas like the original Star Wars series must eventually come to an end. Carrying on after the natural conclusion risks fatiguing fans and driving the original story into the ground.

Unfortunately, Warner Bros. Discovery seems determined to never end its most lucrative franchises regardless of fan . After 2022’s The Rings of Power proved that the Lord of the Rings series was still profitable and the Fantastic Beasts movies kept the Harry Potter series alive, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav shared that both franchises will be mined for content for decades to come. Zaslav told an audience at Goldman Sachs' Communacopia + Technology Conference that the company’s “great IP,” including Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, "has been underused."

WB Risks Doing Too Much With Harry Potter & Lord Of The Rings (& For The Wrong Reasons)

During Goldman Sachs' event, Zaslav proposed “bringing Harry Potter back to HBO for 10 consecutive years” and adding “multiple movies" to the Lord of the Rings franchise. After the mistakes of Fantastic Beasts 3, it's surprising that Zaslav claims there's untapped gold in these hills. However, the reason behind these new projects is even more concerning. As he spoke about plans for the series, Zaslav said that there is a lot of "shareholder value" in these franchises and that the company needs to take advantage of its "best capital.” Without a veneer of artistic concern, the CEO seemingly confirmed that both franchises will be run into the ground for profit.

While it might be naive to expect that a media conglomerate’s CEO would expound on the value of originality and authenticity while speaking to investors, the fact that franchises like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are seen as nothing more than content mines to empty is worrying. Studios have always wanted to make the maximum profit from every series they invest in, but this streaming revolution means they can now put out more content with less oversight at a lower cost. As such, viewers could be flooded with new Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter projects, but there is no guarantee that they will be high quality.

WB's Plan Misunderstands Why Harry Potter & LOTR Movies Worked In The First Place

Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter didn't succeed solely because they were franchises. They became franchises in the first place due to their superb storytelling, which is a distinction that Warner Bros Discovery seems to misunderstand. Long before the Fantastic Beasts franchise even began, the basis for the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies were great stories that viewers were already invested in. The adaptations took those stories and put a lot of care into getting the adaptations right. Attempting to artificially re-manufacture this approach has resulted in some very bad prequels, even if some were financially fruitful.

On paper, the Fantastic Beasts movies and The Hobbit adaptations seem to be as successful as their predecessors, but that's if they're judged solely by their financial performance. However, any fan of either franchise can tell you that this is far from the truth. There is more to both series than profit, which explains why they were successful books years before they became movies. Harry Potter’s TV reboot has no excuse to exist, and there's no beloved source material left to adapt. Like the new Lord of the Rings content, this spinoff is likely to struggle with winning over viewers, even if it does make a lot of money.

Why There's Still Hope For Harry Potter & Lord Of The Rings

Despite how money-focused Zaslav's comments are, some of his statements could be reassuring for fans of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. Zaslav saying that this plan requires "the best creative people in the world" is encouraging, and the fact that Warner Bros. Discovery hired Troma graduate James Gunn as the head of their DC division means they are willing to take some creative risks. If the studio can get the best creatives to tell these stories — and only release what's really worth telling — then there might be value in exploring these worlds further. However, this has to be done carefully.

Warner Bros. Discovery can’t just approach these franchises as cash machines that the studios must use because they are so valuable. Turning The Hobbit into a three-movie epic when the lighter, more playful original novel was far shorter than the original Lord of the Rings trilogy smacked of transparent desperation, and this sort of approach has been done to death in recent years. If Warner Bros. Discovery wants viewers to keep coming back for more of these franchises, they will need to produce shows and movies that are worth watching — not just cynical cash-ins that reunite old cast but offer nothing beyond a nostalgia trip.

How Will WB Expand Harry Potter & Lord Of The Rings Franchises?

The Harry Potter TV show is officially happening, and the franchise could continue with an adaptation of the stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. According to Chris Columbus, who directed of the first two movies in the series, a Harry Potter and the Cursed Child movie would be the only way to continue the story. However, the franchise could avoid further collaboration with its controversial creator J.K. Rowling by focusing its future spinoffs on the extended universe of the Wizarding World. There are many minor characters that a new Harry Potter movie could explore without returning to the original heroes.

The future of The Lord of the Rings franchise is harder to predict. While The Rings of Power season 2 will release in the next few years, it has been a long time since the series graced cinemas with a new movie. Adapting The Silmarillion as a movie trilogy would be a bad idea, as the book doesn’t conform to the narrative format required for a direct adaptation. However, turning J.R.R. Tolkien's folktales into an immersive extension of the franchise’s universe could work on the small screen. No matter how the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter franchises continue, Warner Bros. must avoid stale cash grabs at all costs.