Exclusive: Emma Watson Will Return To Harry Potter If JK Rowling Isn’t Involved
Our trusted and proven sources have told us Emma Watson may return to Harry Potter, but on one JK Rowling condition.
This article is more than 2 years old
The Harry Potter film series is one of the most successful franchises of all time. The original eight movies following a boy and his friends struggling to get an education while being constantly threatened with death made so much money that Warner Bros cannot seem to let the idea of continuing them, even if they also can’t seem to figure out how to make them work. A key part of that would be getting back the original stars of Harry Potter, but our trusted and proven sources have told Emma Watson will only return to the franchise if JK Rowling is not involved in any way.
That is a pretty big ask on Emma Watson’s part, to cut the original author of the Harry Potter books out of the franchise entirely. While the reasons for Watson refusing to come back to the Wizarding World while JK Rowling is involved are not entirely specified, the safe bet would be how controversial the author and her social opinions have become in recent years. We have to speculate that JK Rowlings’ very public, very loud, and very constant commentary on the rights of transgender people in the United Kingdom (and broadly, the world) has made Watson not particularly willing to be further associated with her.
Notably, Emma Watson made a comment at the BAFTAs earlier this year that many took to be directed towards JK Rowling. Watson was arriving on stage to present an award when fellow actor Rebel Wilson joked that the Hermione Granger actor “calls herself a feminist, but we all know she’s a witch,” a comment that is a bit iffy in itself. Emma Watson replied “I’m here for all of the witches,” which was taken in Internet discourse to be a tacit disagreement with JK Rowlings’ public beliefs on transgender individuals.
At that point, there was significant backlash and much praise of Emma Watson for her off-the-cuff remark perceived to be about JK Rowling. In particular, Watson was described as a “woke brat” and that she was insufficiently grateful to Rowling for her film career (though Rowling was not initially supportive of Watson’s casting and little involved in the film franchise at the time).
Since the end of the original eight movies in the Harry Potter film series, Emma Watson has starred in a number of films, including the Disney live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (along with Wizarding World actor and subject of controversy Ezra Miller), and The Bling Ring. However, she has not starred in a movie since 2019’s Little Women and is one of the more selective actors of her generation, so it would seem likely that she is being pursued more heavily by Warner Bros than vice versa.
This all puts Warner Bros into the position of potentially having to choose between the return of one of the stars that made the franchise or the author that has done significant damage to the franchise via their public persona but also has become increasingly involved in the expansion of the series. We will just have to wait and see what they decide.
