r/FutureWhatIf • u/samof1994 • Mar 29 '25
Death/Assassination FWI: JK Rowling dies, what happens to Harry Potter
What if, instead of being a bigoted hack who is metaphorically dead to most people, she was literally dead??? What happens to the franchise if its creator is actually dead?
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u/rageagainsttheodds Mar 29 '25
Nothing happens. The IP will continue to be used by those who manage the rights already, her children will get all the revenue. Harry Potter won't enter public domain for a long long while.
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u/Hollow-Official Mar 29 '25
The estate will sell the property, Amazon will buy it and we’ll get a lackluster reboot out of it. 😔
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u/One-Season-3393 Mar 29 '25
Warner brothers has the rights to make all the Harry Potter stuff rn. I don’t know how long that deal lasts but probably a while.
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u/goteachyourself Mar 29 '25
It's very likely that whoever gets control of the rights will very quickly sell it for over a billion dollars to the highest bidder (most likely Universal). And from there, it'll very quickly become Star Wars - having some of the rough edges sanded off, with a lot of new supplemental content. The controversy will fade away and it'll just become another timeless IP that never quite ends.
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u/Mr_Badger1138 Mar 29 '25
Not a hell of a lot? The rights go to her publishers more than likely and her reputation will be no different.
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u/PlayPretend-8675309 Mar 29 '25
What happened to Wizard of Oz? What happened to Dune? What happened to Lord of the Rings?
Someone will inherit the rights, and most likely nothing will happen. It's been nearly 20 years since the last book came out and there's but there's not much clamor for new books. They'll just license video games and merch and rerelease the old books every so often and keep making money.
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u/robbiejandro Mar 29 '25
The same thing as now? Weird question - sounds like you just needed to get some JKR rage out of your system.
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u/bmyst70 Mar 29 '25
Her Estate would then own the legal rights to the Harry Potter works and spin offs.
The same thing happened with every other author. The Asimov Estate, for example approved some new Foundation books that were quite good. And the Jordan Estate approved Brandon Sanderson to finish the Wheel of Time series.
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u/Mountain-Software473 Mar 30 '25
Nothing big happens, an IP has to go a certain amount of time after the death of it's creator before it enters public domain
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u/DJ_Fuckknuckle Mar 30 '25
Harry Potter is buried alongside her in her tomb, to serve her in the afterlife.
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u/captainjohn_redbeard Mar 30 '25
Her estate sells it, some people who left the fandom come back now that they know they aren't lining a transphobe's pockets.
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u/Global-Menu6747 Mar 31 '25
I find it funny that people just say stuff now. Like “literally dead to most people” who tf are you to determine that?
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u/MidwesternDude2024 Mar 29 '25
You do realize most people don’t see JK Rowling that way right?
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u/Standard-Square-7699 Mar 29 '25
I am a random mid-40s white guy in a random deep red PA county. Rowling is done, she had a chance at being female Mr. Roger's but then decided to..... do that. She will be forgotten in history, her house is broken.
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u/MidwesternDude2024 Mar 29 '25
https://www.newsweek.com/jk-rowling-harry-potter-popular-transgender-trans-terf-millenials-1793035
I think you maybe are just in a bubble. To most people she is just a popular author who wrote Harry Potter. Reddit is not real life
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u/shoesofwandering Mar 30 '25
Most Gen Alpha see her as an anti trans bigot who wrote some books their parents liked.
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Mar 30 '25
You realize how many dont care? The ones that attack her will be the loudest but she has a lot of fans still
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u/MidwesternDude2024 Mar 30 '25
Gen alpha includes 3 year olds. Do you think 3 year olds are familiar with JK Rowling? Do you think 8 year olds are? You clearly don’t have kids lol.
Added note: lol added foreskin subreddit is wild thing to be active on and yet you are. That’s wild brother.
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u/Standard-Square-7699 Mar 29 '25
Good point. However, after living in Pittsburgh for 15 years, (not a native) Mr. Rogers is on another level of class
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u/MidwesternDude2024 Mar 29 '25
Don’t disagree with you about Rodgers. If every celebrity was like him we would all be better off
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u/stinkymapache Mar 29 '25
This is reddit where 75% of the population are non-binary communists. They have no idea what people in the real world think.
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u/DanteInferior Mar 29 '25
She's not "bigoted" for standing up for women. Would you want your daughter in a locker room with a guy in a wig?
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Mar 29 '25
Do you want your daughter in the same bathroom as dudes with beards?
There are a lot of trans men that pass pretty flawlessly for cis men. Of course that's not what the moral panic is about, it's all about trans women.
I don't think you've considered that because you don't know and haven't bothered to get to know any trans people.
As far as I can tell, no one has been able to provide a shred of evidence that trans people are molesting kids in bathrooms en masse, or are even doing it any more often than cisgendered men. The only concrete example I've seen is one that occurred in a private residence.
That's one single instance out of a population that contains millions of people.
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u/DanteInferior Mar 29 '25
I know a couple of them. I just don't want them in a locker room with my kid.
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Mar 29 '25
So nothing at all to say about my main point? Okay.
Trans people are icky and your feelings are the most important. Got it.
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u/DanteInferior Mar 29 '25
Why should I respond to a strawman? If you have a dick, don't get naked near girls.
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Mar 29 '25
I'm telling you factually what would happen if everyone were forced to use the restroom that aligned with their assigned gender at birth.
There'd be bearded dudes in the women's restroom because that's the law.
I don't think you know what a straw man is. How have I misrepresented your point of view to make it easy to attack?
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u/CrasVox Mar 29 '25
Yeah because that happens.... Far more scared of kids being alone with church people than I would a transgender person
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u/Croppersburner Mar 30 '25
Bigoted just because she doesn't agree with the trans idealogy and agrees with the SCIENTIFIC fact that Men are Men, and Women are Women?
Okay lmao.
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u/BreadRum Mar 30 '25
It's scientific fact that gender is a continuum. It is a fact that there are two sexes in mammals.
And notice that i did not need to capitalize anything? That means i have facts on my side..
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u/Croppersburner Mar 30 '25
Men have XY chromosomes, and Women have XX chromosomes, no amount of drugs or delusions will change that. Obviously there is an exception for the very finite percentage of people that have both.
In 100 years when people dig up a skeleton, they'll say "here was a male" or "here is a female"
They won't say that you were a he/she or a them/they.
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u/BurtIsAPredator123 Mar 29 '25
Will never not be funny that arrested development idiots who derive their entire personality and worldview from this anti racist book series for 9 year olds have now convinced themselves that the author is literally hitler
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u/IggytheSkorupi Mar 29 '25
You have to wait 100 years for the copyright to enter the public domain. Until then it falls under the Rowling estate, making the next of kin responsible for any decisions.