Continuing her rampant desire to obliterate her reputation as the mastermind behind one of the most popular, beloved, and lucrative multimedia juggernauts there’s ever been, J.K. Rowling has offered a helpful reminder that she’s far too rich to care what people think about her.
As recently as a decade ago, Harry Potter reigned supreme as an almost universally-beloved IP, one that spanned a multi-billion dollar empire that covered feature films, video games, theme park attractions, studio tours, and countless more methods of generating eye-watering levels of revenue.
While that’s still true, Rowling has conspired to make herself public enemy number one in many circles with her continued denigration of the LGBTQ+ and transgender community. The backlash to the recent episodic reboot announced by HBO Max was deafening, but she’s still going to be making money hand-over-fist regardless of how many people are threatening to boycott the show.
Dialing the smugness up to 11, though, the author responded to one of her many detractors by intimating that she doesn’t give a damn if nobody likes her, because the royalty checks are going to carry on rolling in either way.
The comment was obviously in the wrong when there are a lot of folks out there comprising of multiple generations who absolutely adore Rowling’s work – even if we’re not exactly giving a shout-out to the sprawling Cormoran Strike fandom – but they’ve been placed in an ethical conflict by finding their love of Harry Potter being counteracted by its creator’s questionable views.
To paraphrase an age-old chant from the terraces; “She’s J.K. Rowling, nobody likes her, she doesn’t care.”
