Hogwarts legacy, developed by Avalanche and officially announced during the PS5 showcase on Wednesday evening (here the news), it is probably an excellent opportunity for all fans of the Harry Potter saga to experience a videogame experience set in the magical world that is finally "weighty". However, the news is now that JK Rowling, mother of the literary saga, will not be involved in the development of the game.
The news comes from official FAQ page of the game, in which WB Games specifies that "JK Rowling is not directly involved in the creation " despite “his extraordinary creation [is] the foundation of all projects in the wizarding world”.
In the case of other brands, the absence of the author from the development of a project of this type and size it wouldn't be that important, but with Harry Potter the matter becomes more complicated, for two reasons.
The first: although not always been "at the forefront" in projects related to his creation, heavy productions such as the films of Fantastic animals and where to find them they still saw JKR as a screenwriter, and it seems strange that WB Games reported it as not present in production so quickly. Furthermore, given the presence in the game of a very particular and alternative temporal setting compared to what has been seen on the big screen up to now (a nineteenth-century Hogwarts), Rowling's advice would have been very important.
A burning story
From here, however, we come to the "hot" side of the story. It is now in the public domain that Rowling is allegedly having big friction with Warner Bros. and the production of the works taken from the books due to phrases believed to be transphobic both disseminated by the author on Twitter and disseminated within a series of detective stories written by the author under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith.
Rowling's positions have been severely contested and several members of the production and cast of the films have dissociated themselves from the figure of the author. Hypothesizing that this process has among its fruits too an expulsion of the writer from the WB trial. Games it may not be that unlikely.
It is even questionable whether JK Rowling receives royalties for Hogwarts Legacy, and WB Games, for its part, has avoided officially commenting on the story. In fact, Warner Bros. 'latest comments on the affair are in a statement to Variety in June, in which he completely dissociated himself from the author's thought.
It is very likely that given the quantity and quality of creatives involved in the Harry Potter franchise the level of Hogwarts Legacy will certainly not be "low" compared to the source material. However, if we look at the story from Rowling's side it is not difficult to see elements of much greater complexity: that the author soon loses and begins to lose control of her narrative universe?
