Harry's going to be a wizard once more, this time without the regular cast. This TV reboot is something everyone saw coming. But is it a good idea? Can the franchise survive its desperately needed new face or will this jump from film to TV be its downfall? Join Derek Johnson II and Nicholas Killian as they discuss its future.

. This is Film Center, your number one show for real entertainment industry news.

No fluff.

All facts.

Now here are your anchors.

Derek Johnson II and Nicholas Killian.

Hello everyone, I'm Derek Johnson.

I second.

I'm Nicholas Killian and this is Film Center.

Your number one place for film industry news.

Nicholas, what we talking about today?

Today we are talking about Harry Potter.

Harry Potter.

Why are we bringing up Harry Potter?

Are we talking about the the reboot here?

Yes, we're talking about the reboot.

And the question is, is the reboot of Harry Potter going to be successful,

or is it just going to end up terrible like the Lord of the Ring shows?

To be fair, it doesn't matter if it's going to be good or not,

because people will always say, , wow, you know, I can't believe.

They tried to do redo Harry Potter, da da da.

The originals were better.

Right?

Right.

But if it is good, people are like, wow, this is so good.

I'm gonna go back and look at the originals.

And there's a thing called hate watching.

That's true., it's the only reason why Velma was gonna get a second

season is cuz people hate watched it.

Right.

We should do that.

Yeah, we should definitely hate watch Velma.

But like I said, these two are basically my favorite franchises and pretty much my

entire childhood, especially Harry Potter.

Harry Potter, great, great movie series.

They started off with a bang.

That first movie was big.

I remember when Harry Potter came out.

Oh.

It was so large, especially culturally.

That even people who were like, oh, the the books are are great, the books are

even better, people didn't even care.

They didn't wanna listen to those people for once.

Right.

The craziest part is the second one when they had that big snake.

Yeah.

Yes.

Chamber stickers scared the crap out of me.

Whenever I went to go see it in theaters and my mom.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of people have a lot of fond memories of like visceral emotions, so

some people are so emotionally connected to the series that they, they mess up

on this reboot, it's not gonna be good.

, I had a cousin though, hated the Harry Potter series, not because it was not

good, but because he looked just like him.

That sounds tough.

. People who look like celebrities always have the hardest lives.

But speaking of the lookalikes, , they're gonna have to get somebody

who looks like Dale Radcliffe, what do you think your prediction is?

Which way are they gonna go with this?

So, the way that I think it's going to go, is this gonna suck?

I think it's gonna suck.

Okay.

Because studios only care about making money.

Yeah, that's, that's all they care about.

, it's not like, oh, people are like, , they're remaking it

because people love Harry Potter.

They're like, oh no, this makes money.

It's a profitable ip Right now, they're not taking any chances on originals.

They haven't been doing it for years and supposedly won't be doing any

really original stuff for years to come.

Because it's too much pressure.

It's, it's too much pressure to make tons of money.

I think a celebrity said that recently.

What was that?

It was Matt Damon.

Right.

Matt Damon.

, there was an interview that he did years ago, and it was like off camera

with Sam Jones . Where they were asking him like, Hey, , how come you're not

in the type of movies you were in?

Right in the beginning of the two thousands.

Right.

Or towards the beginning of your career.

Right.

And what he basically said was the fact that studios can't afford to

make those types of movies anymore.

Back then the day, you could rely on DVD sales.

Right?

Right.

If you made an okay movie, you could make they, let's say, Actually, it

wasn't an okay movie, it was a bad movie, but it got like half its budget back.

You can guaranteed get all of that back from DVD sales, but now since everything's

streaming, you can't really get the same amount of money you used to have.

And the thing is, is that it was possible that the movie could

completely flop and you still get that money back with DVD sales and still

get that money back from DVD sales.

Because I remember I don't know if you've, have you ever heard

of the blue collar comedy tour?

Yeah.

So, All of their stuff didn't do well.

Yeah.

But then when it came to DVD sales, it flew off the shelves.

That's what a lot of people forget.

That's where cult classics kind of came from.

Right.

Was it, was these these movies that you've never heard of that didn't do well?

Right.

And then you would see them in the video store and for some

reason they were always rented?

Or when you went up to, I'm gonna show my age, but like when you went up to.

In your video stores, we went to Blockbuster, or you went to Family

video or some stuff like that.

You would ask the store clerks, oh, what's good?

And since they seen everything, because they're there all day, right?

They would tell you, oh, this one's good, right?

Oh, I like this one.

And then slowly you become a cult classic.

That where the DVD sales just start flying off the shells, right?

Because the straight recommendations over a period of time, instead of it

just like being all at once, but now, The way everything's set up because studios

for some reason banked on streaming.

Netflix has tricked them into thinking that streaming is the

number one way to make money.

Yeah.

It's not, it's not that now they have to make all their money back

on the first and second weekend.

Yeah.

, they have to make it back on the first run . It has to have

a respectable opening weekend.

It has to at least make predictions.

Right.

, that's why HBO according to the rap HBO is now going to focus

more on theaters, and this is going to include hbo max as well.

And everyone knows that studios do not give all their kids

the same amount of attention.

, if HBO starts focusing more on films and now this new Harry Potter

thing is going out, technically Warner Brothers discovery, right?

Right.

. But they don't cheat on shows on the same No, they don't.

And, and if they're focusing on theaters, and this is a TV show,

it makes a lot of people worried.

Which feeds into the question that I would ask if you guys don't know Derek

is a writer and director . And as, and Nicholas is a ventilator and a actor.

Oh.

What I would ask you is based on your experience, do you think that

Harry Potter is going to do well?

, I think it's possible.

. I think it's possible.

It's possible I could get hit by a rock right now.

Heck yeah.

Yeah.

It's true.

It's possible a rock to fly the window, but I say it's possible, but the caveat

is so large it's probably going to fail.

The caveat is, is that for this to succeed, it's gonna need the same loving,

tender care that the original movie series had, which I don't think it is.

This is clearly a cash grab.

I think it definitely has the potential to, to be good if

they maybe go in a different direction or something like that.

But I don't think they're gonna do.

I'll say it like this.

What arcane on Netflix came out was extremely popular.

So it was Castle Vegas.

Those were video game based stuff, right?

Yeah.

But the people behind it, they cared enough about it.

And I cared enough about doing a good enough job to.

, make it what it was, ? But I don't think that this is one of those

times, I think that you're right.

It's one of those times where the studio just sees an ip.

They just wanna shovel money somewhere, just like they did with Lord of the Rings.

How much money did those movies make?

Oh, dude.

The Lord of the Rings.

So for the first season, the first season, Amazon produced for the Lord of the Rings.

Rings of power was 465 million.

God dang bro.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then it said they're going to commit 715 million overall, according

to, you know, the Hollywood Reporter.

Dude, that's not chump change, man.

That's not something that you just sneeze at, man.

They're talking about over half a million dollars.

Oh billion.

Over half of a billion dollars.

Yes.

Over half a billion dollars.

Yeah.

So they're funneling all this money.

But at the same time, Amazon can do that.

, Warner Brothers, discovery relies on media ticket sales to make their money back.

I don't care what anyone says as much as creatives hate to hear

this, this is a business someone has to pay their creatives.

Right.

Somebody's gotta make the money.

Someone has to pay the people who run the cameras.

Someone has to pay the people who make all the art.

Someone has to pay the actors.

These people have to get paid.

If people, if people just wanna make art just to make art, then

they wouldn't do it on this scale.

They just wouldn't, and you wouldn't be able to do it on

the scale without any money.

Amazon does not rely on these shows making money to make money.

All of these shows that Amazon Studios has, it's basically a giant advertisement

for one of the lar, not one of the, the largest e-commerce business period.

Unlike w unlike Warner Brothers Discovery, in which case, you know, they have

to make sure this makes back money.

One of the things that I think could.

Is a no-brainer.

And I think anybody with half a brain and likes Harry Potter could

really see the way that I think Harry Potter could work is number one.

Like you said, the thing is people are gonna hate it.

People are going to not like it, even if it was perfect.

Right.

, even if it was great, they took a new fresh take.

The problem with every movie that has a very in-depth book.

Is there's not enough time.

You can, you can only make the movie so long.

Right.

Cuz that's why people saying the Harry Potter books were better

cuz there wasn't enough time.

How are they doing the, how are they doing the series this time?

They, they haven't really said how they're going to do the series Uhhuh, but

what they're going to do is completely recast every, everybody and everything.

. This whole TV series, it really came about because of Daniel

Radcliffe not saying that he wanted to do the curse child, correct?

Yes.

. He did the last movie part two, so well definitely Hell was part two.

Right.

Awesome.

That JK Rowland said, you did it so well.

I'm not gonna, you know, make another book and have you go through that

and then, you know, eventually lied and make the curse child.

, that's the issue of being a writer, dude.

The amount of times I've heard writers, myself included, be like,

I'm not gonna write anymore, and then you write something else's so what

ended up happening is they really wanted the three to come back.

Right?

They really wanted them to come back.

What he said, he is like, listen man, I did it for 10 years.

He said, I got out of.

Harry Potter.

I survived.

Harry Potter.

Survived.

Yeah.

10 years.

First of all, being a child actor is not easy.

The honor child actors who have Hollywood has destroyed, or fans of

series have destroyed Holly famously the kid from ET played the UT Puppet.

Overdosed.

There's a lot of kids who end up dying in this industry, which needs to

change or just quit acting in general.

Yeah, like what?

Jake Lloyd.

Yeah.

Jake Lloyd from Star War, from fandom, from Rein.

Yeah.

He quit acting.

Imagine being a 10 year old and being like, People are, are grown

adults are like writing you letters.

They're like, you suck, you're terrible.

You this and that.

That's crazy.

This is before the internet and like tweets and stuff like that.

People were sending this to male at his house.

You know, he reportedly after all the backlash.

Imagine being a kid, you know, like I wanna like growing as a kid.

You love Star Wars, you love it, and then you get to be a part of it.

Be Anneken Skywalker, be Darth Vader's, like Orange Story,

and then so much backlash.

You go and you break all your.

Star Wars memorabilia, and then you say, I quit acting further.

That's sad, man.

So for Daniel, You know, I can, I can empathize when he's like, dude, I do

not want to go back and reli this.

Yeah, he said, he's like, listen, I'm forever grateful and I love it.

, I'm always going to be Harry Potter.

Yeah.

I'm always going to be Harry Potter.

He said, but to McGuire's always gonna be Spider-Man.

There's some roles that are just so iconic.

It's like you're always that person.

Jim Parsons is always going to be Sheldon Cooper.

Yeah.

The only person I know who can like, take faces on and off and be a bunch of, I.

Iconic characters.

Probably like Jim Carey's, like that, Johnny Depp's like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it takes a certain type of person.

And I would argue that though Harry Potter is just too iconic for that to happen.

No, it, it's, it's definitely too iconic.

And the thing was, is that he, he wasn't interested in doing it again.

And then also Emma Watson didn't want to do it again because she was

like, listen, I'm down to do it.

Mm-hmm.

As long as JK Rowlings is not a part of it.

Oh, yeah.

Because of the, of the transphobic comets.

She was making trans The beef.

Yeah, the beef, yeah.

Trans transphobic beef.

Yeah.

And then ruper grit was like, if they'll do it, I'll do it.

Yeah.

But I think, I think there's something to be said.

They were kids together.

They went up through the whole thing together.

They can only really relate to each other in their own spec on a, the decade

of their life, arguably one of the most important decades of their life.

You're talking about from like.

Nine year old.

think they both started when they were like eight or all of 'em started

with like eight or nine and then up until they were like 19, 20.

That's like your life right there.

That that's basically, that's basically your childhood.

Yeah.

And so like one of the things that I thought was pretty crazy

about it is Rupert Grant, right?

So.

Everybody had to submit, like back in the day, you had to submit a tape in Yeah.

To be this person.

Yeah.

And what ended up happening was is that he did a rap, apparently.

What?

. . He did a rap cuz he was like, there's, there's no way I'm gonna get this role.

There's all the, and he was, he basically wrapped his introduction, his slate, and.

Yeah.

All of it.

They were like, oh yeah.

You know, and he ended up getting the role and he's like, dude, this is crazy.

Like Ima imagine there's some casting director who's like, yep,

this guy over there is rapping.

Yeah.

That seems like something an idiot would do.

Okay.

Yeah.

You're a casting.

But the thing is, is, so apparently what was happening was, is that they

were using the fact that they were gonna start a television series.

Mm-hmm.

Against the three.

Yeah.

As leverage to get Oh, like threatening them.

Like if they don't do the movie, then they're just recast them or something.

Right.

And then they were like, be, go ahead.

I would've said the same thing.

I'm Daniel Fing Radcliffe.

Like, you don't gotta talk to me like that.

Right, exactly.

I'm the og.

Like we said, like, okay, from Daniel's perspective, I don't wanna

do anymore and I have enough money.

How much money has he made anyway?

Oh, he's made, like, he's made over a hundred million dollars.

Daniel Radcliffe.

Is made $95.6 million.

And Emma Watson made about 70 million.

And so Rupert Grant and that's, that's from parade.com?

Yeah.

Okay.

So they have enough money to last them for their entire lives, basically.

Right.

He doesn't also, he doesn't wanna do it again.

Obviously Daniel has gone off to do a whole bunch of different

other types of projects.

Right.

And then here along comes some really, I'm not gonna say.

Jerks, probably just some Hollywood douche bags, right?

You were just like, oh, hey, guess what?

We are gonna be make Harry Potter if you don't do this movie.

That makes them, it's, it's kind of a, a douche bag move.

You're gonna threaten somebody to, to force them to be in something.

What is this, the 1920s Hollywood where they choose you, tell you

who to marry and stuff like that.

But it, it makes sense.

Like, it makes sense why they would restart the, whole series

because JK Rowling's like, yeah, let's restart it because she

wants to continue making money.

Right.

It's, it's her baby.

Yeah, of course she does.

Yeah.

But altogether they made 9.5 billion . On all eight movies.

Against a 1.7 billion budget that is, oh my gosh, now that is, that is huge.

That's a huge profit.

And of course, especially nowadays when the studios are desperate for

money anyway, what are you gonna do?

It's gonna make money.

Right?

It's, it's gonna, even if you were to cut down that in half and say half of that.

Yeah.

If, if it's still billions of dollars.

Right.

If, if they only made back half of that $9 billion, it would still be enough

to warrant a reboot or warrant making more because all of the spinoff movies

are not doing well for them at all.

No, no.

The Fantastic Beast franchise is dead.

But see, here's the thing.

That's probably why the reboot's gonna die because they didn't

put enough love and care into the sequels , how do we know they're

not gonna learn from their mistakes?

And then that's what I was saying.

That's what I was saying about how you make the Harry Potter series

work of the way that you make it work is you do it by the book.

Okay, so say it like this, right?

Mm-hmm.

Sopranos and Game of Thrones mm-hmm.

Made it profitable, showed studios that you could put a lot of

money into an hour long drama.

. And it'd be insanely profitable, but you mess up that ending,

but you mess up that ending.

Yeah.

And then it's, and it's done.

Right.

But what you do and reports are coming out that they're going to do a book, a season.

A book of season.

Okay.

All right.

A book of season.

And if you do an hour long, and let's say you do 12 episodes, there

should be plenty of time, right?

Yeah.

And all the only thing you, you have to do is just do the book.

See, this is what made the original Lord of the Rings run so great because in the

original Lord of the Rings film franchise.

Peter Jackson was like, okay, I am definitely going to follow the

books almost as closely as I can.

Right.

And because there was that respect to the audience and there's that respect

to the people who love the series.

They were really great.

Even though a lot of people, this happens every time where they

say the books are always better.

Right.

Because they usually are, cuz like we said, the movies, they

just don't have enough time.

The series.

Series, they might have enough time.

So then when people heard, oh, they're making Lord of the Rings TV series, right.

Or that stuff.

They didn't respect the source material, right?

They didn't respect the source material, and so that's why it flopped like it did.

If they respect the source material, they learn from their mistakes.

With the spinoffs, they learn from their mistakes from other franchises

like the Lord of the Rings, they'll do well, but I have a feeling that

they won't, at the end of the day, The reason why they hear a Potter book.

Yeah, there's magic, there's all this other stuff, but the type of genre it is

is not like, oh, it's just fun fantasy.

It's mystery.

Do you remember, do you remember the Sorc for Stone Man?

The Sorc for Stone is a very mysterious book ? Harry Potter

has the same background, right?

You know, his parents are dead.

You know, his adoptive family hates him, his aunt and uncle

and stuff like that, right?

His cousins mean to him.

And then here comes a long guy who's like, oh, you know, You're

wizardry and he's like, about what?

And from that point on, you're like, oh, it's gonna be this happy times.

No, it's, it's like there's a lot of darkness in that series.

There's dungeons, there's dragons, right?

There's like sword.

People will die.

You know what I'm saying?

It's very dark.

I think if they go that right, I might be good.

I don't know.

What do you think?

And then, you know, as we got older then the series got more mature and darker.

Like you, it kind of grew with the audience.

Right.

And the thing is like, I don't know if you remember this, but before

the, it was called ABC Family.

, they used to have Harry Potter weekends.

Yeah.

And those were amazing.

You, those were very popular.

Just the didn't they, had, they had a reunion that was majorly popular?

Yes, they did.

They did have a reunion because HBO Max was, you know, coming out.

Yeah.

And they did, they need content.

They did the same thing for friends, you know, did the fringe reunion.

Yeah.

But for Harry Potter, it was the most watched.

Piece of content on the platform at time.

And it wasn't even a new movie or nothing.

No.

Right.

It's just them getting together, just talking about it.

These people's presence in general generates revenue.

Right.

So just shows you the strength and the power of the fan base that loves this ip.

So it's weird to me how some studios like, yeah, it's for money.

Cuz you have to, like, Don't make it for money, make it for the fans and

then that's where the money will come.

It's not money first.

Exactly.

And then fans, you know, it's fans first and then money.

All you think Josh Whedon got so popular.

He has tons of fans.

There's directors who are like that.

When you hear Quentin Tarantino movie, they're like, oh, I'm gonna go see it.

It doesn't really matter what it is, it's cuz it's Quentin Tarantino.

I am a fan of his right.

So that way he gets my money.

I think there's this misconception.

That Oh, as long as I put tons of money into it, it'll generate tons of money.

Like it's a machine or something?

No, not at all.

And the thing is, is that I think that this new Harry Potter run could

potentially be way more lucrative than the one that we grew up with.

Yeah.

Because the thing is, is the people who grew up with Harry Potter, my, myself

included, we're in our thirties now.

Yeah, we're in our thirties..

We have careers, we have money . We could use a Harry Potter weekend so

that everyone just sits down and, and relaxes and watches anyway.

Right.

It's nostalgia.

Exactly.

If they did it right, it would be so lucrative for them.

You could literally tell Harry Potter on the screen.

All really successful television shows and film are, or I don't wanna sound

sappy, but they're kinda like done with love, you know what I'm saying?

Like they, they care about it.

Right.

Compared to a lot of them that compared to a lot of these reboots that are just

done for just straight up profit and they have like nothing to do with the

original series and all the reboots.

And sequels have like nothing to do with the original ips and

people are, are getting ticked.

But like you said, the studios don't want to bank on new stuff because

they need all that money upfront.

And but it was also, like you were saying, the thing is, is the studios

that are making possibly the best content or the studios that don't need.

The content to make them money, right?

Like Amazon, right?

Like Apple, apple Plus, right?

So like, especially cuz you look at Space Force C, right?

You look at John Malkovich is amazing, fantastic.

You look at, you look at, look at severance, right?

So.

It's really a giant advertisement for the Apple products, right?

Unlike Disney, unlike a Warner Brothers Discovery who on their streaming

services, they have to make money.

Amazon and Apple have the ability to go for more original stuff.

They just do , to be fair, floor of the ring was on Amazon.

They should, they, but, you know, they sink so much money into it,

just like another one wheel of time.

Right.

But once again, in both of these cases, what was bragged about it?

Do you remember?

The marketing.

The marketing for both Wheel of Time and Lower the Rings

was not, oh, these characters.

Oh, this is, who's in it?

Oh, this is what's with the world.

It was always, Hey, get so much money we put into this, so come see it.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Oh, this is the most money that we've ever put into something, so

you should definitely come see it.

Compared to marketing that's done for stuff that you actually might

like, like for Like for C, there was so much marketing push of the

actual world that's in it, right?

For the marketing of You can talk a lot about space Force, right?

Space Force was the same way, which a lot of it that marketing was.

Look how funny Steve Carell is, right?

When the marketing is usually geared more towards the story and what's

going on, I can usually tell like, , this is gonna be worth quality.

Rather than, oh, the marketing is gets how much money you spent on this thing.

Yeah, that's usually, that's usually what happens, and you can usually tell

from the actors, you're like, oh, they look like they're having fun doing this.

Yeah.

But then they're also acting . I do think that the new Harry Potter series is

going to suck because they do not care.

They just wanna make money.

It's a clear cash grab.

Clear cash grab.

They'd seen the billions of dollars that it's made in the past.

I was so excited for the Lord of the Ring's show to come out,

like it's my favorite series.

He's tried to, he's tried to watch the first episode several times.

I can't, and you can't make it past.

I can't make it past like 15 minutes in.

I even, I have now I've seen all to the second episode and I just was like, okay.

I'm just gonna start reading summaries from now on because

I just, cuz you can't do it.

It's unwatchable.

I even asked him cuz I was really excited.

I was like, Hey, do you think the Lord of the Rings movie?

Is it, is it gonna be good?

And you, you were like, no.

You can tell from you always can tell from the marketing when they focus on the

story and characters and the marketing, it's going to be good when they focus

on, Hey, look at celebrity star power and how much money we're spending on it.

It's a sure sign that they're not banking on the script,

which is what people care about.

Exactly.

But it's really unfortunate because, you know, it's my two favorites,

so, and studios are destroying it.

So appreciate it.

Unn unnecessarily, they can totally do better.

They, these studios are, have been around for a long time because in the past

they've made really smart decisions.

They just have to get this smartness back up, I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They just gotta make good decisions.

But yep, that's it for Film Center.

I've been Derek Johnson a second.

And I'm Nicholas Killian.

And our verdict on Harry Potter is it's gonna blow.

That's it for film center.

We'll see you next week.

Bye.

This has been Film Center on Comic-Con Radio.

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