Warner Bros. CEO Says HARRY POTTER, DC, and THE LORD OF THE RINGS Properties Are "Underused"

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav recently talked about some of the studios’ biggest properties including DC, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings, and he believes that they are all being “underused.”

The Wrap reports that Zaslav was recently speaking at the Goldman Sachs conference and when sharing his thoughts on the company’s intellectual property he said:

“One of the other real strengths of Warner Bros. is we talk about the great IP that Warner Bros. owns. But, for us, the challenge is that our content, our great IP — Harry Potter, DC, Lord of the Rings — that content has been underused.”

They did have a great run with Harry Potter; they’ve constantly been trying to capture the power of the DC universe with mixed results; and The Lord of the Rings franchise was perfectly executed under the direction of Peter Jackson with the original trilogy.

He went on to say WB hasn’t had a “long-form” Superman project since 2013’s Man of Steel and “We haven’t done anything with Harry Potter for more than a decade.” He added, “We haven’t done anything with Lord of the Rings.”

While Zaslav is saying that the properties are underutilized, the studio is currently working on maximizing them. But, they are looking to “be careful not to overuse the content.”

When it comes to DC, James Gunn and Peter Safran have implemented a 10-year plan in hopes of getting fans excited about watching their films again and break the superhero movie fatigue cycle. As for Harry Potter, there a new series in the works for HBO that will adapt the original J.K. Rowling novels. Then there’s The Lord of the Rings, which they have big movie plans for.

I would love nothing more than for these future film and TV projects to turn out great! They’ve got a long road ahead of them, but with the right team of talent involved, these future projects could be massively successful for WB.