Disney thinks it has found the new JK Rowling (without the trans baggage), this is the title of the archived article, live version is called: "Disney thinks it has found the new (right-on) JK Rowling"
I'm sure that will come as quite a shock to Rick Riordin, who thought that
he was their right-on answer to J.K. Rowling.
Guess they're not making any more of those Percy Jackson Disney+ shows, then...
Never heard of her but I don't read children's books and it's hilarious if they think they can predict or force a "new Harry Potter". And the comments are having none of it either.
I also searched for reviews of the book and found this description: "it hits all the key notes of our zeitgeist. Climate anxiety, empowerment of children, wealthy people are evil, and wonder at the world." Sounds horrible and preachy, I don't think these people understand what the themes are that made HP universally appealing.
I love how they're always claiming auch-and-such author is outselling Rowling by some fantastically huge amount, but then it always turns out to be a brief blip in some particular market that has already settled down by the time the claim is made.
Didney trying to find a "new harry potter", rather than just trying to find new markets, only shows how creatively bankrupt the mouse is. Always looking backwards.
To me, Harry Potter was pure and simple escapism, literally. It was about Harry escaping his shitty mundane British life and going into a magical world full of wonder and spectacle, much like the readers themselves.
Shoehorning "the zeitgeist" on climate bullshit and eeeevil rich people into it is completely missing the point. You're not just doing escapism wrong, you're shoving reality in where it doesn't belong which it the complete opposite of escapism. Bad form. BOOOOOOOO
I just realized that Disney could make their own Harry Potter equivalent by creating a story about Merlin teaching several students in magic and one of them is special because [insert reason] and then fantasy stuff happens.
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God, Disney is so fucking incompetent! They have everything they need but they chose to make trash instead.
The "new JKR" already was the Twilight writer. Then the Hunger Games one. And Divergent. And so on.
They were important phenomenons, but nothing compared to the crazy that was HP. Not even the MCU has done so in a way that became people's identities.
Harry Potter was lightning in a bottle. It came out when the internet was new, and being able to talk to people around the world about anything was amazing and wondrous.
JKR managed to write a series that had people of all ages wanting to know why Harry was The Boy Who Lived. The internet is too big and too scattershot for that kind of water-cooler discussion on a worldwide scale. More importantly, it can't be manufactured by a corporation. it happens naturally or not at all.
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They did actually make their own HP back in 2010 to a resounding meh.
I was thinking about this the other day, and how, whenever there's a big fad that's popular with children, clueless adults in marketing inevitably try to capture some of that fandom by throwing out something similar to what the kids already like, but also different enough to be legally distinct.
And it literally never works, because I think, on some level, it's obvious what they're trying to do, even to children. Children want The Big Thing that all their friends on the playground are talking about, they don't want the thing that's somewhat similar.
Biker Mice From Mars would not exist without Ninja Turtles.
Big Bad Beetleborgs would not exist without Power Rangers.
Digimon would not exist without Pokemon.
Percy Jackson would not exist without Harry Potter.
Equestria Girls would not exist without Monster High.
Lego Worlds would not exist without Minecraft.
I'm sure there are other examples, but I can't think of any offhand. But, suffice to say, pop culture is strewn with these franchises that only exist as a futile attempt to poach something else's audience. These things may have varying levels of success, you may even think of them fondly or nostalgically, but ultimately and undeniably they remain forever in the shadow of the thing that they were shamelessly attempting to imitate.
The ironic thing is that when The Next Big Thing arrives, it's usually something completely dissimilar to the existing Big Thing, and something that you couldn't have predicted, rendering, I presume, the entire endeavour expensive and pointless.
I think all it does is saturate the market with The Big Thing plus loads of similar-but-different properties trying to copy The Big Thing, thus devaluing the concept over all because consumers get sick of it.