A new Wizarding World, fandom conferences, Cursed Child’s debut and script publication(s), and the run-up to ‘Fantastic Beasts’! Is it too much or does it just cost too much? Are serious readers and fans being exploited? Listen in for some discussion of the fun and the controversy! Janet Batchler, long time friend of this blog and professor of screen writing at USC, joins MuggleNet’s Keith Hawk and me to explain the inside story of why we’re seeing movies based on books turned into adapted stories and multiple versions of the Cursed Child script. Not to mention her thoughts on the new Universal Wizarding World Theme park in Hollywood!
MuggleNet Academia Lesson 46: “Saving All of our Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts for the Upcoming Releases”
In terms of changing texts between printed editions of the script and authorial control, I ran across a passage in a book written by one of the lower-rung Inklings that might grant an interesting perspective on this discussion.
The passage is from a biography of a very obscure writer named A.E.W. Mason and a book called “The Four Feathers”. For purposes here, the thing to pay attention to is how Mason and his Inkling biographer rest on the question of authority in relation to text.
“In the film (Mason, sic) was willing to allow certain variations from the story…but he was definite and explicit about the really important points of his original idea (Roger Lancelyn Green, A.E.W. Mason: The Adventure of a Storyteller)”.
I find that passage interesting because here we have an opinion that allows a certain amount of flexibility, but nonetheless demands that certain narrative elements are non-negotiable.
I guess my two questions are how does such an opinion strike today’s audiences, and what, if any, parts of Rowling’s story are essential, and which secondary?