Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings are underused, says CEO

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is asserting that the media company isn’t using three major properties to its fullest. With all the great IPs at its disposal, it’s not too hard to understand where he’s coming from.

Zaslav was speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference (via TheWrap), where he discussed WB’s strength being in its IP library. He noted that it’s been a decade since Man of Steel debuted as the last “long-form Superman” venture. He also points to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

Both these IPs have been used fairly recently, but it’s not too shocking that Zaslav might turn the other way considering — in the case of Harry Potter — no WBD series or movies explicitly set a timeline based on J.K. Rowling’s original novels. It wasn’t until April that fans caught wind of a Harry Potter TV show casting its way to Max.

While he seems to want to boost the use of the spellcasting franchise, Lord of the Rings, and DC, which just recently debuted Blue Beetle in theaters, he’s also not blind to oversaturating the market. He noted that they have to be careful not to overuse these legacy IPs.

This revelation comes as Barbie continues to hit highs by dethroning The Super Mario Bros. Movie as the highest-grossing movie of the year and becoming the studio’s biggest release in its history.