Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
Intellectual property reparo! After a dud prequel trilogy and J.K. Rowling’s continued descent into the right-wing eco-system of gender essentialist transphobia, Warner Bros. Discover shook off the Petrificus Totalus spell and got to work rebooting Rowling’s cash cow about magic school. While enthusiasm about returning to Hogwarts through Harry Potter’s eyes is tepid, Warner Bros. is doing so anyway, and they have a cast to prove it. Earlier today, the network announced its new teaching staff leading Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and, yes, Cho Chang through their studies. Heading the announcement is John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore; British thespian Janet McTeer as McGonagall; I May Destroy You‘s Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape; and Hot Fuzz‘s Nick Frost as Hagrid. They’ll be joined by Luke Thallon as Quirinus Quirrell and Paul Whitehouse as Argus Fitch.
Described as a “faithful adaptation” of the book series, the show will tread the familiar ground explored by the film series, another faithful adaptation of Rowling’s books. This time, though, it will take longer and generate zero box office receipts. However, that was before fans benefited from Rowling’s demented social media posting. Now that we know Dumbledore is gay, wizards shit on the floor, and a Jewish wizard named Anthony Goldstein passed through Ravenclaw, we assume these details will have an impact on the story. Still, much of the past decade of Rowling’s work has focused on the egregious harassment of transgender people. Variety noted in November that between September and October, Rowling tweeted about gender identity 200 times, which would be impressive if it wasn’t X, the everything app, where hatred of marginalized people is business and business is a-boomin’. She’s still on it, too. Last week, Rowling and fellow WBD employee John Oliver got into it after Oliver used Rowling’s example in a segment about trans athletes, a conservative scapegoat for the country’s ills despite the number of people identifying as trans in the US falling somewhere between .5% and 1.6%. It’s a big problem that everyone’s talking about. Big men, strong men, come up to us, tears in their eyes, and complain about transgender fencers.
Last year, when Warner Bros. made public its tolerance for Rowling’s transphobia, we wondered “who else in Hollywood will be willing to stick their names right up alongside hers.” Now we know.
