J. K. Rowling and the License to Print Money

Un-adapted Potter books? Holy shit!
Grab a Macbook and meet me at Starbucks!

Brace yourselves everybody, I just read some earth-shattering news. Warner Brothers is going to let a first-time screenwriter take a whack at one of the studio's biggest movie franchises. Which one? Harry Goddamn Potter. Yup, there's going to be new Potter-verse films. Not sequels per-se, but stories set in the same fictional world and based upon J. K. Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Sort of the Frasier to Harry Potter's Cheers. I'm sure your first question is: what and the where to what then?


Yeah, I had to look this up too. It was an in-universe textbook mentioned in the Harry Potter series which Rowling later fleshed out and published as a real book. It's very meta. And before you call her out for slapping together a cheap cash-in on her popular novel, you should probably know that she donates 80% of the book's cover price to Comic Relief, a children's charity. Bet you feel like a jerk now, don't you?

It was similar to how H. P. Lovecraft published copies of the Necronomicon, written
in human blood and bound in human skin. You know, for the children.

How do you think they came up
with Star Trek Into Darkness?

Alright, so who is this untested screenwriter into whose hands Warner Brothers has entrusted their financial future? Is it some promising film student? Or maybe some kind of script-writing savant? Perhaps they've assembled a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters. Nope. It's J. K. Rowling. I guess when you've written a book series that outsells the Bible and its many sequels, movie studios are willing to let you give it a whack.

The decision was somehow difficult for Rowling who told the Mirror (it's a newspaper in the U.K. She's not like talking to her own reflection or anything):

Overcome with emotion, the author wiped
away a tear with the Magna Carta
and then bought Romania.

"It all started when Warner Bros. came to me with the suggestion of turning 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' into a film. I thought it was a fun idea, but the idea of seeing...[the book]...realized by another writer was difficult. Having lived so long in my fictional universe, I feel very protective of it..."

-J. K. Rowling on how she grudgingly 

agreed to become even richer

Perhaps my good friend
The Queen can convince you...

Hmm...actually, I suspect it all started when somebody at the studio drove a truckload of money up to Rowling's door, but that's neither here nor there. The premise of the new film seems pretty sound compared to say, squeezing three movies out of The Hobbit (no, I'm not over it) and as I've mentioned before, I actually kind of like her and her stupid addictive Harry Potter books. So let's face it, she's got my ten bucks.

No. Just no. Look, we love you J. K. but that's just pushing
your-wait, really? They're making that into a series?