Yesterday Rowling broke her Twitter platform silence of eight months with a post and a retweet of a PotterMore posting about the new logo and tagline for ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ (‘J. K. Rowling Returns to Twitter‘).
She also reposted a January 2017 post, ‘Cursed Child Film Rumours,’ at her JKRowling.com website about rumors of a Daniel-Emma-Rupert film production of ‘Cursed Child.’ She says this rumor is “rubbish:”
I have no idea how these stories emerge, but to set the record straight once and for all: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a stage play, it was conceived and written as a stage play, it was always intended to be a stage play and nothing else, and there are absolutely no plans for it to become a movie, a novel, a puppet show, a cartoon, a comic book series or Cursed Child on Ice.
And she posted another link, much like her Twitter re-tweeting, to the PotterMore story about the Times Square logo-and-tag-line unveiling: ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Takes over Times Square.’ That posting included this video.
Three short notes:
(1) The excitement about these events which even we are obliged to note are of no importance whatsoever, the change in logo-tagline of a Broadway play and an author’s return to a social media platform (!), testifies to the currency and vitality of Harry Potter’s status as the global shared text.
(2) If any conclusions are to be drawn from the JKRowling.com twin postings on top of the return to Twitter, my first guesses would be (a) it’s a business decision to use the tweeting platform with more than 14 million followers to highlight marketing events representing no little investment (how much do you think it cost to pull off that Times Square event about essentially nothing beyond reviving interest in a smash hit that may be showing signs of jumping the shark? To make the logo square with books and film logo?) and, (b) Rowling herself may be not totally on board with this. That reposting on her website of the 2017 denial of a movie production in the offing (2026?) sounds a bit like a ‘note to self’ (and to the world) that she is not really a prisoner of Rowling, Inc.’s mercenary concerns.
(3) Does anyone out there doubt that eventually, perhaps as with Tolkien “well after the author’s demise,” this play will be adapted into a movie and that there will be a Harry Potter movie re-booting, as well as a television series, opera, and Ice-Capades? If Christopher Tolkien couldn’t stop it, Rowling won’t be able to, and, given her charity concerns and commitments, I have to wonder at how long she will hold out against pressure externally from Warner Brothers and internally from Lumos and Volant.
Wayne Stauffer writes me that the movie adaptation rumor was a real thing: https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/warner-bros-developing-harry-potter-film-featuring-original-cast/
Forgive me for wondering if Warner Brothers didn’t float the rumor to demonstrate to The Presence that her fans want this to happen.
Her “I don’t know how these rumors get started” comment comes off as more than a little naive.
Yes. Times change, minds change. Never say never?
Once again, your comments ring true, John.
I would think the adaptation from stage to screen would keep the story closer to the “original.” But I’m just an English professor, what do I know?
The National Theatre Live Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead of two years ago – with Daniel Radcliffe – suggests one sort of ‘bridging’ possibility.
This is probably all my fault for saying the absence of the WB/Universal logos and images made the theater venue seem “classier.”
https://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/theatrical-decor-for-harry-potter-and-the-cursed-child-an-augerys-nest-of-easter-eggs/#more-19027
Maybe WB is hedging possible future lack-luster box office from the Fantastic Beasts series? Or maybe they are resurrecting the rumor just to keep the franchise buzz going? Call me cynical…
Cursed Child sounds so little interesting (and so probably irritating) that I have not attended to it more than to read posts about it here, but if one thinks in terms of things like ‘fairy stories’ (including Kunstmärchen) and bodies of lore and tale, one can easily imagine HP ‘bits’ (more or less) successfully becoming a television (and/or radio drama) series, opera, ballet, puppet show, cartoon, comic book (series), or ‘X on Ice’. I’m intrigued – excluding the unattractive Cursed Child (which sounds like it were better treated as ‘authorial apocrypha’ than ‘canon’), bring it on (perhaps with unlikely moderation…)!