Why the Harry Potter Franchise Is Unique

NEW YORK (MainStreet) -- The end of Harry Potter may have studio executives, publishing houses, and, yes, depressed readers waiting anxiously for the next multimedia franchise phenomenon, but they shouldn't hold their breath.

"It's extraordinarily rare for a property to appeal to as wide an audience as Harry Potter did: boys as well as girls, adults as well as children," Diane Roback, children's book editor of Publishers Weekly, tells MainStreet. "We aren't likely to see a book or series with that kind of widespread popularity for a long time."

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe profited from being part of a strong, multimedia franchise. Experts say the next big book-to-film phenomenon may be a long time coming.

Elisabeth Gruner, associate professor of English at the University of Richmond, who teaches the Harry Potter series in her classes, agrees it became a worldwide, multimedia phenomenon based on a convergence of factors that are hard to replicate.

"The confluence of the growth of social media, the tie-ins with the movies and even the post-9/11 concern with fighting ultimate evil are all unique to that particular series and its times," Gruner says. "I don't really think there will be another Harry Potter in the way that we know it."

That doesn't mean publishing houses and studios won't try to recreate the magic. In fact, they already have with popular young adult book series such as Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson, Pitticus Lore's I am Number Four and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events all failing to turn into a successful film franchise.

"They got one movie out of it and then, that was it," Gruber says.

These and other unsuccessful attempts haven't dissuaded the publishing and movie industries from searching for Harry's successor. According to Roback, big young adult titles such as Veronica Roth's Divergent, Ally Condie's Matched, James Dashner's The Maze Runner and a unreleased novel called Legend by Marie Lu are being shopped around as film franchises.