Last month, I wrote a post "What Will Hollywood Do Without 'Harry Potter'?". The impetus was a report showing that the Harry Potter movies have a halo effect on DVD sales because they drive people to stores to buy the discs and while there, they might pick up a few other discs.
The post got me thinking - can anything really replace Harry Potter? Sure there are continuing franchises and studios will always be looking for hits from young adult series. But will anything be able to replicate the scale and success of Potter?
I took my question to Quora, a question-posing website that is chock full of smart people, many of whom know a lot about movies.
I got tons of great feedback and ideas. While The Hunger Games got a lot of love, there were some other series thrown out there that I hadn't thought of. Hollywood studios, take note.
Noah Chestnut, director of digital media at HPSInsight, suggested Brian's Saga by Gary Paulsen. The five-book series starts off with Hatchet, the story of a boy trying to survive alone in the Canadian wilderness with only a hatchet. Chestnut believes the books are appealing because the are grounded in reality which he say would be "refreshing after years of superheroes."
His choice was an inspiration for other Quora readers. Allison Hastie points out that Hatchet has a "dedicated following" of kids who read the book in school.
Marc Bodnick suggested that the next great franchise might be one that has already started: Percy Jackson. A movie based on the first book, The Lightning Thief, didn't do very well at the box office earning only $226 million globally on an estimated budget of $95 million. But the books are hugely popular. Why not do a reboot?
Several readers pointed out that while the material might be great, any franchise needs the full force of a studio's money, creativity and bravery to work. Mitch Rotter, who spent eight years at New Line, remembers being terrified when the studio took on The Lord of the Rings franchise (which went on to earn $3 billion at the global box office). The studio committed to three films right off the bat which was a monumental investment. According to Rotter:
Much like any high-stakes gamble, that time was fraught with second guessing and a parade of LOTR experts saying what should and shouldn't be done (including me), yet they stayed the course and (for the most part) let Peter [Jackson] realize his vision.
Is any studio brave enough to do that today? Rotter points out that Universal was poised to make a similar commitment to Stephen King's Dark Tower series which was going to be three films and a TV series. But as costs escalated the studio (which is now owned by Comcast) decided to pass.
Replacing Harry Potter might actually be an impossible task, points out Ken Miyamoto, a working screenwriter.
Harry Potter is just one of those unique anomalies where everything fell into place. The timing was impeccable (post 9/11 and during a time when fantasy films finally showed some quality and value with the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a partner). It just won't happen again until A) Studios stop trying, and B) We stop looking. Let "nature" take its course and another wonderful and cultural anomaly with surface. No one was looking for a J.K. Rowling... and look what happened.
Film "freak" Adam Mordecai says maybe we don't need to replace Potter at all. Maybe the boy wizard has another life waiting for him on television. He suggest a seven-season run that would allow the producers to get more in-depth into the stories and include many of the details that had to be cut out of the movies. Although smaller budgets would cut down on the special effects, he believes the series could work on the scale of something like HBO's Game of Thrones.
"It would be magical," writes Mordecai. And isn't that really what everyone is looking for?
Have a suggestion for new franchise? Comment below. I'd love to hear more ideas.
