![]() ![]() Hogwarts Legacy is an open-world adventure game from Avalanche Software, a developer known primarily for making the Disney Infinity series and licensed movie tie-ins - the last game it released was Cars 3: Driven to Win in 2017. Still, the game is excruciatingly familiar. You will not see Dumbledore or Grindelwald the professors and the students are all new. Unlike the Fantastic Beasts films, Hogwarts Legacy does not cross over with any characters from Rowling’s original books. since Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Other than Cursed Child, which is currently running in six cities around the world, Hogwarts Legacy is the only new Potter-related content from Warner Bros. was not actively developing any Harry Potter or Fantastic Beasts films. In November 2022, Variety reported that Warner Bros. ![]() Although the first entry in the Fantastic Beasts series did well commercially and well enough critically, each subsequent film has performed worse. The game comes at a time when Warner Bros.’ attempts to milk this particular franchise have mostly failed. Hogwarts Legacy has the fortune, or burden, of being an essential piece of a financial portfolio that is otherwise teetering on the edge of collapse. Rowling initially sold the film rights for the first four books to Warner Bros. Harry Potter is influential enough that NBCUniversal bought the broadcast and streaming rights to the franchise for an estimated quarter of a billion dollars in 2016. The post-canon Broadway play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child won six Tony Awards, and the Wizarding World areas at Universal Studios theme parks earned the ire of Disney for beating the company at its own game. Even after the original book series ended, as Potter has waned in popularity, it remains a cultural touchstone. People still casually drop their Hogwarts house in their dating profiles proper nouns like “Voldemort” have been adopted into our language as shorthand for a tyrant or proto-fascist who comes into power god knows how many people have Deathly Hallows tattoos. We were all reading the damn books.ĭescribing my fandom for the series is telling the story of an entire generation. I was 11, the same age as Harry when he first went to Hogwarts. ![]() When the series began in my youth, whether I would be into it was not really a question. It would make her richer than most people in the world. Joanne Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, famously, as a single mother struggling in poverty. After all, Jeff Bezos isn’t posting on Twitter about how much he grudges paying Amazon employees or allowing them bathroom breaks maybe it’s easier to support the villains of the world who stay silent.Hogwarts Legacy is not so much a video game as it is an attempt to resolve what was a particular writer’s very specific point of view into a “universe” that will please everyone, regardless of whether that ever coheres into something that makes sense. Perhaps it’s the fact that Rowling has made herself, as an individual, so proudly and publicly aligned to this cause that has fans conflicted. If Harry Potter fans want to enjoy the magic of the wizarding world, they simply should do so what’s the difference between sending money to Rowling, over someone like Jeff Bezos? Disney’s complicity in Florida’s “Don't Say Gay” bill is just as repugnant as Rowling’s “activism,” yet fans aren’t considering boycotting all things Disney. Refusing to buy a video game is not activism - it’s not even close. Concerned fans have as much chance of cancelling Star Wars as they do Harry Potter. Both concerns are irrelevant, as the developers have already been paid, and Rowling is the wealthiest author on the planet - fans can’t make a dent in her pile of golden galleons, and Harry Potter is far too popular to kill with collective disinterest, especially in our era of reboots and retreads, where even niche, cult classics are endlessly resurrected for consumption. ![]()
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