In the age of franchises and blockbusters, it seems crazy to think that the DC comics, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter franchises are underutilized. However, that’s how one Warner Bros executive sees it.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communcopia Technology Conference (via TheWrap), David Zaslav called that the DC, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter franchises are “underused.”
“One of the other real strengths of Warner Bros is we talk about the great IP that Warner Bros owns,” Zaslav said. “But, for us, the challenge is that our content, our great IP — Harry Potter, DC, Lord of the Rings — that content has been underused.”
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He went on to specifically talk about how Warner Bros hasn’t done “long-form Superman” in over a decade — referring to Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. The studio isn’t a majority shareholder of The CW, so he didn’t mention the network’s Superman and Lois series that’s running.
“We haven’t done anything with Harry Potter for more than a decade. We haven’t done anything with Lord of the Rings,” Zaslav claimed.
These comments were a bit puzzling. The Harry Potter series will be rebooted, Warner Bros announced earlier this year. There have been spin-off films released since the end of the film series, the Fantastic Beasts franchise, and a video game, Hogwarts Legacy, released earlier this year. In terms of the Lord of the Rings, there was a spin-off series released on Prime Video last year, The Rings of Power.
While Zaslav is ambitious to milk more from the cash cows that the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and DC franchises are, he noted that Warner Bros must be careful “not to overuse the content.”
“We think there’s a lot of shareholder value in attach a 10-year DC — a real plan around DC, bringing Harry Potter back to HBO for 10 consecutive years, doing multiple movies of Lord of the Rings,” he said.
The Warner Bros executive concluded, “When you put those franchises in, it’s the best performing studio in the world. We need to deploy our best capital, and we need to do it with the best creative people in the world.”
Whether this means an influx of more content in the DC, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings franchises remains to be seen. As noted, David Zaslav and Co. will have to be careful to not burn out its audience.
Warner Bros executive David Zaslav has called the DC, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter franchises ‘underused.’ Read More