J.K. Rowling’s Hogwarts detention seems to be coming to an end.
The famed “Harry Potter” novelist was shunned by HBO Max earlier this year, when the streaming platform aired its highly anticipated “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts,” a celebration of Rowling’s creation. The storyteller was sidelined because she has gone to bat defending women amid the proliferating transgender craze.
But David Zaslav, president of the newly minted Warner Bros. Discovery, is reportedly scheduled to meet with Rowling to discuss not only bringing her back into the limelight, but creating new “Harry Potter” content for HBO, according to the Daily Mail. The conjoined brand owns HBO, CNN, TLC, TBS, the Food Network, the Discovery Channel, and DC Comics.
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This meeting with Rowling isn’t Zaslav’s first time rocking the boat since taking the helm at Warner Bros. Discovery.
He famously and unceremoniously obliterated CNN+ — the news network’s streaming platform — less than a month after it got off the ground. He also halted DC Comics’ “The Wonder Twins” HBO Max movie, which was in development.
Zaslav’s decision to potentially bring back Rowling is noteworthy, as she’s faced intense criticism from the left over her comments defending females from males who identify as female.
Rowling has been a target of the left since she tweeted in June 2020 that one’s sex cannot be changed.
“If sex isn’t real,” she wrote, “the lived reality of women globally is erased.”
In December 2020, Rowling called for an end to the “climate of fear” that has defined the transgender debate, telling Good Housekeeping she has received “heartbreaking letters” from people telling her they regret having surgeries to alter their bodies due to gender dysphoria.
The renowned writer said people “are afraid to speak up because they fear for their jobs and even for their personal safety.” And for good reason, considering Rowling herself has been punished for her perspectives.
News of Zaslav’s meeting with Rowling comes after Netflix announced in an internal memo to employees that the streaming platform will not censor its content just because some staffers might find it personally offensive.
“If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you,” states the memo, later adding, “Entertaining the world is an amazing opportunity and also a challenge because viewers have very different tastes and points of view. So we offer a wide variety of TV shows and movies, some of which can be provocative.”
“We support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with,” it continues. “We let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices.”
Netflix issued the memo several months after comedian Dave Chapelle sparked the ire of some employees who claimed his latest special, “The Closer,” featured “transphobic” jokes.
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