Cancelling of JK Rowling not going as planned

[Lovelyview]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2025/05/30/jk-rowling-is-a-billionaire-again/

First time I've heard the term 'gender fundamentalism' used to describe opposition to gender ideology. Real Alice in Wonderland stuff.

Harry Potter is a tremendus phenomenon and is not in decline at all. Everywhere you go around the world shops and institutions are full of Harry Potter marketing, merchandise and fan material.

We've just returned from Istanbul and all of the above is true; and in one restaurant we ate in our bill was presented to us inside the cover of a Harry Potter DVD.

I am very happy that her cancellation is going badly. She’s brilliant, speaks up for women and I think she is great.

It's the kind of phrase which betrays the fact that the author of this piece is completely uninformed.

It shows that he thinks it is common ground that everyone has a gender which either matches or doesn't match their biological sex, and that Rowling's position is that people should perform the gender that matches their biological sex.

He doesn't realise her position is actually more like, "Gender is harmful made up bullshit. Do what you want, but sometimes sex matters."

I have no words to explain how much i admire this woman. She is a complete legend and im so grateful we have her on our side.

That's identity politics for you. When you step into, and attempt to inhabit, any particular 'identity' you find you have to be consistent and coherent and pure in your practice...for the reason that identities are entirely social and tribal and you have to conform with all of the precepts in order to be accepted.

I've heard it's because good mid-budget films couldn't deliver anywhere near the same return as a very mediocre big budget movie. Now that big budget flops are rolling in, and the popular franchises driving them have been squeezed dry, there seems to FINALLY be a course correction underway.

I thought she had moved on to being racist now?

Well that's the impression some media is trying to give (apparently over the casting of Snape) but everyone actually involved in denying it...

I don't think many people can stand any woman being successful.

They think they are on the side of the oppressed and against the big, bad dictator. And of course dctators are always fundamentalist. One issue is that they cannot see their own totalitarianism.

Excellent 😁

That wouldn’t have put the game at the top of the bestseller lists - I believe it was about sending a message to the sort of people who object to JK Rowling.

just looked it up, it sold 12 million copies in its first 2 weeks across ps5, whatever the equivalent in Xbox is and PC

If young people hate her it’s down to stupid adults and the media giving them disinformation. My 13 year old daughter who actually thinks the trans stuff is nonsense still thinks that JKR has said “some horrible things”. Ill continue trying to teach her otherwise

Just ask her what’s she said and ask her to cite a source

There are young(ish) people on YouTube who feel they have to start their video with a 5 minute denunciation of JKR before they, with obvious joy, show off all their HP merch.

It's clearly something that they've been taught they need to do to stay in the Party's good graces.

Hogwarts Legacy game was out in 2023 and despite the naysayers, was a hit, so she must get revenue from that. Plus there's a second game coming out at some point.

JKR is a publishing nightmare for TRAs. 😂

Edited for typos

If you were on Mumsnet when the game came out we discussed the whole saga.

The TAs made Hogwarts Legacy the biggest selling game in the world. It was always going be successful, BUT in the run up to the game and at its launch the TAs gave it millions and millions in free publicity. All of twitter youtube facebook etc was talking about it. They tried to cancel streamers who played the game but that boosted their views.

Loads of media outlets published articles about the arrival of the game with journalists always suggesting that JKR was wrong. Yet none of that mattered.

They thought telling everyone that the game was wrong would end it, but instead they made sure everyone on the planet heard about a game where you could go to Hogwarts. For the the average person that sounded AMAZING.

Sure a bunch of people went out of their way to buy it to upset TA types. However that was not why it sold as much as it did. It succeeded because people worldwide love Hogwarts. All they needed was to hear it existed and people went wild.

The TAs made JKR millions of dollars in sales because they hate her so much. All they needed to do is not post online about the game when it came out. Don't make Harry Potter trend on tiktok, twitter and Google, but they could not do it. It isn't even about her opinions really it was about the fact she was a woman saying it. Remember loads of right wing politicians, Muslims, Catholics etc tend to think the trans stuff is wrong, but the TAs don't even get as obsessed with that fact.

More than that the success of the game made Warner Brothers commit to the TV series which will make JKR even richer. It will have HUGE extra publicity with articles like this.

As a rough guide, a film need to make double its budget or more to make a profit. This is because the cost to make the film will not include the cost of the marketing (which they can easily spend tens of millions on) and because the cinemas that show the film keep a share of the profit (from the ticket sales). How much the cinemas get to keep depends from country to country, but IIRC ticket sales in the US give a larger share of the ticket price back to the film studio than elsewhere in the world. This is why the 'domestic' ticket sales in the US are given separately and are a big factor for the film studio compared to the 'rest of the world' ticket sales.

This is why (for example) film critcs are saying that Mission Impossible - the final reckoning (budget $400m) needs to make close to $1bn to make a decent profit.

TLDR: It isn't as simple as $400m - $250m = $150m profit.
$150m - marketing costs and - cinemas taking their cut from ticket sales could = -$100m. So a $100m loss overall.

ETA - apologies, I see that this was answered and I should have scrolled down slightly before replying!

I agree in some ways, but also if she does well it is a really good way to show the boycott and TRAs aren't winning. It shows she has quiet support.

I think it is helpful to support things with her name on it (it has the added bonus of really winding people up and her being so amazing charity wise with what she earns anyway).

And virtually all HP fanfiction too. It's almost obligatory to make one of characters trans "to undo some of the harm she's done to our community". Which wouldn't exist without her.

Shoddy journalism as ever when writing about JKR. Surely at some stage the media will finally notice that pissing off half the world's population has not gone down well and that JKR's staunch support for women and children is supported by most people.
A genuinely good woman.

I think the cinema keeps around half of the ticket money. So probably didn’t make their money back. That said it’s not like it poofs out of existence. It’ll probably be rebranded as a cult classic in ten years.

We should remember that thousands of ordinary women who don't have JKR's money have in fact been cancelled. They have lost jobs, careers and some have been assaulted.

Yes, they have.

JKR is doing this for them. And for all the women who can't afford to take the risk of being cancelled because they have children to feed.

OT but Anyone But You was made for $25mil and grossed $220mil. We used to see these type of films a lot more. I wish we still did!

That's infuriating.

Mud sticks, especially to women.

“Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.”
― Khaled Hosseini