Warner Bros creates Harry Potter franchise development team

Warner Bros has created a new development team to manage the Harry Potter franchise.
 
Based in London and California, the Harry Potter Global Franchise Development (HPGFD) team will “develop and execute a high-level strategic vision for the Harry Potter brand and its ancillary businesses, working closely with J K Rowling’s team at The Blair Partnership and other internal and external stakeholders and partners”.
 
Josh Berger, president and m.d. of Warner Bros UK, Ireland and Spain, is taking on the role of president of HPGFD alongside his current job.

Polly Cochrane, who is senior vice president and group marketing director at Warner Bros UK, is taking on the responsibility of senior vice president and chief marketing officer of HPGFD. Paul Condolada is joining the company as senior vice president of HPGFD and Harry Potter Digital.

Even though the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Bloomsbury), was published in 2007, the franchise is still going strong. There are theme books in London, Florida and Osaka (Japan) and a film based on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, one of J K Rowling’s Comic Relief Harry Potter universe titles, is due in 2016.

The author is also working on a stage play about Harry Potter’s life before he went to Hogwarts school.

Last month Rowling a new piece about a 30-something Harry Potter and his friends at the final of the Quidditch World Cup 2014 for her website Pottermore.com, penned in the name of her tabloid journalist character Rita Skeeter.

In the article, published on the 8th July, Skeeter told readers to looking out for her new biography Dumbledore’s Army: The Dark Side of the Demob, available 31st July from Flourish and Blotts, leading to speculation that Rowling may publish more stories about Harry Potter and his friends today.

However a spokesperson for the author told The Bookseller that Rowling – who recently revealed ambitious plans for her Cormoran Strike crime series  -  had "no plans" to write further stories about the older Harry.