Weird Al Wanted To Record A Parody Of The Harry Potter Theme, But Warner Bros. Turned Him Down
It's odd to talk about parodies of Harry Potter when J.K. Rowling has become a satire of herself. Her relentless retconning of the Harry Potter franchise has arguably led her to writing three "Fantastic Beasts" movies that achieve little other than trying to justify her public statements about Dumbledore's sexual orientation. We've covered before how desperately the franchise needs to move on without her, so I won't relitigate that.
Even without Rowling's contribution, Harry Potter has been among the most parodied book franchises, at least as measured by the number of posts on fanfiction.net and the lasting quotability among Millennials of Harry Potter Puppet Pals: The Mysterious Ticking Noise, among other things. For Weird Al Yankovic, who had already poked fun at pop culture behemoths like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Spider-Man, a saturated media landscape was not going to stop him from having his own say on Harry Potter.
Sadly for us, Yankovic's efforts to make a song about The Boy Who Lived were cut short by his moral preferences. While parodies do not require express permission of original copyright holders, his general policy according to his website's FAQ is to get their blessing anyway both to be professional and to secure the royalty rights to his music. In this case, he would end up regretting that he asked.
Request denied?
In a recent interview to discuss the September-released biopic about his life, the comedian-singer told The Hollywood Reporter what happened when he wrote to Warner Bros. asking permission to caricature Rowling's series:
"Whenever it was, about a decade or two ago, I approached the movie company just to get a general blessing like, 'Hey, I'd like to do a Harry Potter parody.' And I think they said no, or they never responded or whatever. But sometimes when you're dealing with franchises, and you ask permission, you know, there's so many people that can say no, and they usually do."
In the 2000s and early 2010s, we'd expect a Harry Potter parody in the vein of Weird Al's 2011 album "Apocalypse," which featured melodies borrowed from Taylor Swift, B.o.B., and Weezer. Based on my own music tastes from that era, how about an All-American Rejects cover called "Gives You Spells" or a Macklemore-inspired song titled "Wand Shop"? Maybe the timing just wasn't right.
Though the comedian-singer does not plan to release any new studio albums, he does expect to self-publish singles on an ad hoc basis, and while not exactly a studio album, the soundtrack for "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" features new recordings of his music, a new song, and the film's score.
As long as Yankovic is releasing music in some form, a Harry Potter project may still be on the table, especially given his new connection to Warner Bros. through Daniel Radcliffe. He may not care what the studio thinks anyway, as he concluded in the interview, "If I'm doing a franchise, it's usually better just to do it and ask for forgiveness rather than permission." Whenever Yankovic gets around to it, if anyone's still talking about Harry Potter, hopefully he chooses the right song.