Hairy Potter – selling a show when the author is persona non grata

Roman Polanski’s publicists know all about this, so do Woody Allen’s. And of course these days so do J K Rowling’s. While purportedly no longer a billionaire due to her charitable donations, the author and philanthropist has still seen huge success in Australia over the years. Books and films aside, the stage show Harry Potter and the Cursed Child had a four-year record-breaking run at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne, with over 1300 performances and over a million tickets sold. It even managed to survive the on-off COVID cancellations, keep many of the cast and crew on JobKeeper, as they’d been with the production for more than a year, and then come back to further success, having rejigged the over five-hour two-parter into a just as popular, albeit slightly more manageable, three-and-a-half-hour affair.