If you’ve spent any time on BookTok lately, you’ve likely heard about Alchemised, the Harry Potter fanfic turned hotly anticipated romance novel. The novel is an original adaptation of SenLinYu’s fanfiction novel Manacled, which puts Hermione Granger at the center of an alternate narrative that rewrites J.K. Rowling’s books after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Except now the character has been renamed Helena Marino, and any potentially copyright-infringing elements of “Manacled” have been stripped from Alchemised. The fact that the fan fiction wracked up ten million views on the website Archive of Our Own and a seven-figure movie deal has already been struck to bring Alchemised to the big screen points to one of the Harry Potter franchise’s biggest missteps.
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Instead of building out the world, which SenLinYu’s “Manacled” did, Warner Bros., which controls Harry Potter and the Wizarding World film and TV rights, has opted to simply repackage and resell us the same narrative with its upcoming television series. The series is treading the same ground the Harry Potter movies depicted (quite beautifully, we might add), not even a generation ago. The risk aversion seems to be fueled by the failure of the spinoff Fantastic Beasts franchise, whose screenplays were all written by original Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling. And given Rowling’s now controversial nature after her statements about transgender individuals, the result is a split fandom over whether or not they want to support any further Harry Potter properties, especially if they’re penned by Rowling. Although Succession writer Francesca Gardiner is helming the writing on the upcoming television series, Rowling is still heavily creatively involved, much to the fandom’s chagrin.
Harry Potter‘s Future Needs to Be More Than Reboots & Remakes
What the Wizarding World needs is a fresh generation of creative voices to take over Potter’s legacy at Warner Bros. Giving the credit their due is one thing; however, the Fantastic Beasts films proved that being a master at one medium doesn’t always mean a writer will be one in another. And if you ask, the real problem with the two Fantastic Beasts sequels is that they completely switched their focus from Newt Scamander and the wonderfully imaginative creatures of The Wizarding World to a convoluted prequel story about Albus Dumbledore. Also, the book the series is based on, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, was one of Harry’s fictional textbooks that Rowling wrote as a companion to the novels. It didn’t exactly have the narrative structure to sustain three movies to begin with.
Yet that’s what we’ll be getting more of – repetitive remakes and nonsensical reboots –along with a waning audience, if Warner Bros. keeps the creative keys to The Wizarding World confined to its controversial creator. It’s a shame, because her incendiary comments aside, Rowling built an incredibly detailed and intricate world in the seven Harry Potter novels. There’s so much more to explore, like the founding of Hogwarts, that could make for an epic, medieval Game of Thrones-style series. Even a prequel exploring Harry’s parents’ time at the wizarding school would be welcomed by the fandom, as Rowling devoted significant storytelling to it in the novels, and such a story would feature younger versions of several more well-known and beloved characters than Fantastic Beasts offered.
Alas, it seems like we’ll just have to grab our copy of Alchemised to get the more imaginative takes on Harry Potter, since Warner Bros. and Rowling seem set in their ways to disregard the love of the property that gave them such power in the first place.
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