Warner Brothers Files Trademark for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Film
By Ani Bundel
Warner Brothers has begun the behind the scenes process necessary for bringing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to screen in the next decade.
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In news everyone knew would be coming eventually, Warner Brothers has begun taking the steps necessary to bring J.K. Rowling’s final Potter tale, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to the big screen. According to SlashFilm, the production company moved today to trademark the show’s title in the UK, which is required if they are going to make it into a motion picture, and merchandise off of it.
The trademark was filed in the UK just over a week ago, but only just spotted today by Brian Conroy, an Intellectual Property Solicitor in Ireland, and a trademark and patent geek who runs a blog tracking such things. As he notes, Warner Brothers has nothing to do with the stage show, so they would not be able to apply to trademark anything from it without J.K. Rowling’s express consent. So despite Rowling hedging at the idea that it could become a movie last spring, clearly she agreed to this.
"Therefore we can safely assume the application has been made with her consent, and on some understanding. It may just be that Warner have the options to all her future works, or this work in particular, perhaps?"
The patent does cover a wide array of things, not just a motion picture–though that’s the big one. Here’s the list of what it gives Warner Brothers the rights to:
"“motion picture films featuring comedy, drama, action, adventure and/or animation, and motion picture films for broadcast on television featuring comedy, drama, action, adventure and/or animation; audio video discs, and digital versatile discs featuring music, comedy, drama, action, adventure, and/or animation”"
Though SlashFilm speculates that Warner Brothers might announce something at San Diego Comic Con in a couple of weeks, that’s highly far fetched. These patent filing are the early stages, and with the show still penciled in to travel across the pond to Broadway for the 2017-2018 season if the West End show is a smash hit, the chances of it even moving into pre-production are a good five to ten years out, Then again, Warner Brothers currently has three Fantastic Beasts films slated to come to theaters over the next five years, with this November’s debut having two sequels on the schedule to debut in November 2018 and 2020. They wouldn’t be ready to start looking at serious pre-production stages for the first of a two part movie until 2021 or 2022 anyway, which is probably the first we could realistically expect the theater world to be ready to give up the rights to exclusivity.
Next: Paul Thornley Talks Ron Weasley’s Life in Cursed Child
And just as a reminder, the original golden trio of the movies, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, are ages 26, 26 and 27 right now. If Warner Brothers were keen to get them to reprise their original roles–and I think it’s safe to say they’d be damned fools not to be–they’d need to realistically wait at *least* five years for them to be close enough to their 40s to be believable, if not longer. My guess would be if a movie of this is coming down the pike, 2025 or so would be a reasonable assumption for a release year.