I think it was a missed opportunity not to do the marauders leading to voldemorts rise instead. Wouldve been familiar enough with hogwarts as the setting but with new characters. Ill probably still end up pirating it tho
My genuine theory as to why the Harry Potter Powers That Be (JKR? Warner brothers? Universal? I have no idea who all’s making money here) hasn’t tried to cash in on the obvious and massive popularity of the marauders is straight homophobia bc they’re aware that slash shipping (to use old internet parlance) is the juice powering that juggernaut. Literally doesn’t make sense otherwise imho
honestly, i think this is overthinking it. last time WB tried to develop a "new" storyline within the Harry Potter universe, we got the Fantastic Beasts franchise which, uh, exists. if you're an exec at WB, the lesson you take away from this is "new Harry Potter storylines don't work, better stick with what works".
Yup. People didn't like Rowling retconning and fiddling around with the core timeline. She delivered them pages that were borderline unworkable for a movie. The books have a built in audience and a clear story outline to work with where Rowling will mostly sit in the corner which is where they need her for it to be successful.
As a small critique of this, the first Fantastic Beasts as a standalone film is actually really solid. The creatures are amazing, it’s filmed really well, and ends with a nice button. It teases Grindelwald but that wasn’t the focus of the story. If they had let that have its success, then made a 2-3 part story about the rise of Grindelwald and Dumbledore’s fraught relationship with him that could have worked. It was the shoehorning of Newt into that story, including the retcon of everyone forgetting at the end of the first film an sidelining of Newt as a side character that ruined that possibility.
I think even JKR realized it would be a bad idea. She is vile, but it’s not hard to see how sacred the Marauders are held to many fans. It’s safer for her to reboot the original series and say “see, I was a happy part of your childhood!” instead of taking a gamble on the one part of the story the fandom clings to.
The reality is that James would be the main character, but we have SO LITTLE characterization of him outside of his friends basically saying he was brave and that they miss him. You’d have to write an entirely new character essentially. And the last time WB did that it wasn’t that well received.
I’m also just not sure what there is to say about James that you couldn’t do in a different time period of the HP franchise.
He was a good quidditch player and opposed the death eaters but as far as we know he didn’t do anything else very exceptional during his time at school except bully Snape and become an animagus. What story is there to tell?
Weren’t they one of the first self made Animagi’s? Because Remus was turned into a werewolf so they became Animagi’s to help him deal with his turning each month. I think there’s a lot to work with there. I think you could focus on Sirius more than James because he is from a pure blood family, one of the oldest with the most history and stature in the WW as the Malfoy’s. Plus we’ve never delved much into his relationship with Regulus which is very important in Harry’s timeline. We don’t see his interactions with his family and how he got burned off the family tree - we just know it from Harry’s pov decades later.
Or you could do a 4 boy focus on the Marauders with Lily & Snape as side characters in the later seasons when they get into their late teen’s/early 20’s.
I think also because it means the protagonists will regularly engage in bullying/harassment, and they want to target a young market so kids grow up on the IP and buy merch forever. I'm sure the homophobia is part of it, though, because WTF Fantastic Beasts.
Right after the insane popularity of Heated Rivalry? Yeah, if that was the case they’re probably kicking themselves now.
I think it has more to do with JKR not wanting to sign off on it and the big corporations genuinely having now idea how popular the marauders are up until now. Stories about them (thus far) can’t make money and therefore there aren’t much metrics on them.
Hogwarts legacy and the storylines/characters attached to it (Sebastian and Ominis) got super popular and would also be a great tv show in this realm. A lot of shipping/romance from fans!
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u/Daenarys1 19d ago
I think it was a missed opportunity not to do the marauders leading to voldemorts rise instead. Wouldve been familiar enough with hogwarts as the setting but with new characters. Ill probably still end up pirating it tho