J.K. Rowling had the world at her feet and continues to throw it all away by tweeting transphobic tweets or writing an essay denouncing the trans community. And now it's finally coming back around to bite her. Rowling, who has been a social pariah since she began sharing her transphobia online over and over again, has avoided events for her previously beloved Harry Potter series and has, for the most part, been locked away in her tower and not done much else outside of writing under a male pseudonym and watching as that series also fails.
Now, it seems as if Rowling's production side of things has also taken a hit. Brontë Film and TV, a production company where Rowling is the majority shareholder alongside her literary agent Neil Blair, reportedly had a 74% drop in profits. That's actually really funny considering how much talking Rowling did online about how her bank account and success reflects that her views aren't hurtful. All of this comes when Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them franchise's future is up in the air with many wondering whether or not it is dead in the water.
What a great bit of news on Trans Visibility day. Continue to try and harm the lives of the trans community, and people will stop wanting to see your work. And this is proof. The news comes shortly after Daniel Radcliffe made sure to remind us all how amazing he is and moderated a trans and non-binary youth roundtable for The Trevor Project. This is also not the first time he's pushed back against Rowling's transphobia.
This was, frankly, a long time coming. As previously stated, Rowling made sure to ignore fans upset by her views and praise the audience she still had. Knowing that that audience isn't going to see her movies or plays is a great bit of karmic justice. The company cited the pandemic as a reason for the drop, claiming that their profit of £1.8M ($2.2M) was because of the closing of theaters meaning a lack of income from shows like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. This drop from £6.9M the previous year can't be entirely attributed to the closing of theaters. Because in that time, the show had returned and was one of the first to reopen on Broadway.
The previous year, which would have ranged from March of 2020 to March of 2021, the show was closed completely because of the pandemic. The earning's report blamed the closures stating “lower income streams and profit shares from theatrical productions which were closed for a large part of the [financial] period due to COVID restrictions.” Which, frankly, should have also been the case then for 2020-2021 when, for most of that earning cycle, they had no Cursed Child productions running. This was also not the only fraction of the company that went down. According to Deadline, "Brontë’s subsidiary, Harry Potter Theatrical Productions, reported revenue of £3.5M, which was down £6.6M, or 65%, compared with 2021. Its pre-tax profit fell 84% to £1.1M."
All this to say that the production company is stating COVID restrictions and lower income streams and profits as the reasons their drop. And we can say that it is because of Rowling's continued vendetta against the trans community that led to this 74% drop in profits. But what we really should continue to do is show our support for the trans and non-binary community and if that means continuing to not see Rowling's productions or things affiliated with her, then that's what we do. You'd think that the failure that was the third Fantastic Beasts movie would have clued her in but then again, we're talking about Rowling who thinks that she can say what she wants with no consequences. That's clearly not the case.
You can watch the first episode of Radcliffe's Trevor Project roundtable below: