That Cursed Child Announcement
Simon H
864 words
September 5th, everyone is patiently waiting for the rumored Cursed Child announcement. It’s 10:40 pm in New York, the play just ended in the Lyric Theatre two blocks away. The Time Square screens suddenly change colors, a countdown appears. This is it. It’s happening. It’s going to be the biggest announcement of the year. We are ready! Is it a TV show? Is it a recording of the play? Or maybe they tricked us and it’s actually a movie? Three, two, one. It’s an updated logo with a brand new slogan made by J.K. Rowling! Wait, what?
To be honest, the new branding looks awesome. The fact that they changed the previous logo to the one that’s in the movies and on the front cover of certain editions of the books is really cool. The circle is now close.! It actually creates a feeling of unity throughout the books, movies and now, the play. Also, let’s not forget that the words “J.K. Rowling’s” were added to the logo. This confirms to everyone that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is indeed canon. There is no doubt left on that topic. Finally, a slogan was added alongside: “Sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places”. According to Pottermore, it “was written by J.K. Rowling herself for the original play description and lends further intrigue to the image.”
Secondly, the event they pulled off was very clever. By making all the screens at Times Square go full Harry Potter was not only insane for the fans who were there at the right time, but also they assured the announcement reached a lot of people who were passers by in one of the most popular places in Earth. The fact that everyone could watch it or see it in person made it feel like the old days when books or movies were coming out, with the community being so hyped about it, and that’s something we should be grateful for. We all stuck together waiting for the announcement, making up theories, impatiently waiting for the big reveal and it was a whole lot of fun.
However, the event wasn’t just rainbows and hippogriffs… To start off, J.K. Rowling came back on Twitter after roughly six months of absence. It was a big thing for us. The one and only creator of Harry Potter was talking about something unexpected coming soon… Basically, the fans went nuts. By tweeting something so unclear and mysterious, the community’s expectations went up a notch, a big notch. Everyone was talking about their biggest dreams and hopes for the series. To summarize, J.K. made it seem bigger than it actually was.
In the same vein, Pottermore got involved by denying the fact that Cursed Child movies were an actual thing. By saying no movies were on their way, people started thinking that the thing that was going to be announced was as big as a movie. Some of the fans even thought it wasn’t a movie because it actually was a movie trilogy. Too good to be true, right? But people still believed it was possible.
From thread to needle, all of the above ended up on social media, and we all know what social media do. They multiply the hype by one thousand. All the community was trying to find out what was going to happen after the play ended and that even continued until 10:30 PM, ten minutes before the big announcement.
Lastly, I think the Cursed Child team should have told us it was going to be a logo reveal. They could have done that easily. For example, they could have tweeted: “Let’s all meet in Time Square at 10:40 PM for the big reveal of our new branding! See you there!” By doing this, the community would not have been so hyped about the event and the reactions would have been much better – I still don’t understand why they didn’t do it like that. Like, we already knew about the new Harry Potter font since it was physically in London, we also knew about the Voldemort logo (The Dark Mark) and about the slogan since J.K. tweeted about it hours before the event… The point is that they should have told us what the announcement was and then surprise us with the big Time Square event, not with the new branding.
To summarize, here at The Rowling Library, we are happy with the changes that were made and with the new branding. The play is now officially canon, the event was a cool way of promoting the change, and the feeling of the community waiting for the announcement like back in the day was super fun. On the other hand, it felt a bit bittersweet because J.K. Rowling and the Cursed Child team made it a bigger thing than it actually was and that’s what caused a slight disappointment in every fan’s heart. Of course, we don’t want to be harsh on them – but that’s how most fans felt after the announcement.
But you know what? Nobody knows what is going to happen next in the Wizarding World. Let’s keep hoping for a bigger and better announcement soon!
