Teevee Harry Potter Trailer Released

I found this new trailer near the end of another article in the UK press celebrating Rowling’s new ten year contact with MAX television for adaptations of the Hogwarts Saga. The first was The Telegraph‘s ‘The uncancelling of JK Rowling: Tide appears to be turning for the Harry Potter author ostracised for her trans views.’ That 15 April piece was followed yesterday by a Daily Mail article along much the same lines: ‘Cancelled? Thanks to her new £16m Harry Potter TV deal, it’s JK Rowling who’s having the last laugh over trans activists.’

Imagine the conversations at MuggleNet and Leaky Cauldron about what to allow on their Harry Potter fan sites. Each has posted declarations, libelous statements in fact, that Rowling proclaims “harmful and disproven beliefs about what it means to be a transgender person,” i.e., maintaining that biological sex is real, and “commitments” that their sites will not print her image, include links to purchase items from which she might profit, or allow discussion of her post Potter work and “life.” See here and here if you have your doubts about those “commitments.”

For Leaky, which hasn’t posted any Harry Potter news since last October, this wasn’t much of a stretch or sacrifice; the website is largely dormant. For MuggleNet, answerable as they are to their Media Labs owners for generating clicks and traffic, this has been a bit more difficult.

The ‘No Cormoran Strike’ commitment, for instance, was broken by hpfanboy13 in his review of Ink Black Heart. MNet has felt obliged, as well, to cover in no little detail (‘New Song!‘) Hogwarts Legacy, the blockbuster computer game, because so many of its readers are playing it, having purchased it despite the site’s call for a boycott of all products profiting Rowling.

And now the new teevee adaptation presents itself. How can MNet cover the show (that all their readers want to know about) with the same kind of passion they have for the film adaptations? 

They announced the series last month, of course, on the ‘Day Of’ but restricted the coverage to a retelling of the MAX press release, no squees or excitement expressed. Since then, though, they have started producing the fan-servicing articles that are their usual fare with respect to casting for the teevee shows (see their thoughts on which actors would make a good Severus Snape or the Terrible Trio). One of those posts ended with a note of excitement about this new adaptation, Rowling and Bronte Studios involvement be damned (or ignored): “Now that’s how you make a cast! Do you agree with what we’ve put together, or are you wrong? Either way, we can all agree that we can’t wait to see Hogwarts again: the Great Hall, the Gryffindor common room, and the hidden swimming pool.”

“We can all agree”? Even those who believe that Rowling is a “transphobe” responsible for “literally murdering” people because of “her harmful and disproven beliefs” that only biological women are women?

Going a step further, the MNet list of ‘Nine Things We Want to See in the New Harry Potter Series‘ did not include even the suggestion of revising canon in the name of diversity and inclusion; in fact, the first comment posted by a faithful MNet reader decried “wokism:” “I want to see all the characters as the correct gender and ethnicity. I want to see a total lack of rage bait marketing. I want accuracy devoid of wokism.”

I think that wish is a pretty safe bet, if Rowling certainly went there with Black Hermione in the casting of Cursed Child and the decision in the Bronte adaptation of Troubled Blood, to make Kim Sullivan, Anna Phipps’ lesbian partner,  a black woman rather than a Margot Bamborough look-alike and mother-stand-in.

I don’t see how MNet is going to be able to keep simultaneously to their inane pledge to cancel Rowling as much as possible and to cover the new teevee adaptation with the zeal and enthusiasm that their market — and Media Labs — demands. Time will tell, but I suspect that fandom forces and boycott fatigue will mean an eventual abandonment of the Rowling Reviling Posture, even if that means a change in current management to affect the necessary about-face in “commitment.”