The Harry Potter Contract That Declares the Winner “Mighty”

I was utterly charmed by this contract between a student and her teacher over whether or not J.K. Rowling will write another Harry Potter novel. As with many contracts, something happened that neither party quite anticipated, in that there is another story about Harry Potter coming, only it’s a play called “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” The contract refers to a new “novel” only, and adds the requirement that it must be written by J.K. Rowling. Therefore, it seems the play is excluded, since it’s a play, and, at any rate, Rowling didn’t write it; she merely contributed to it, with playwright Jack Thorne getting writing credit. The student, however, wanted to be thorough and make sure that no contractual obligation had been triggered yet, so she did what any college student would in this day and age: She tweeted at J.K. Rowling. And, as sometimes happens in magical narratives, Rowling responded and confirmed that, for the time being, the student is under no contractual obligation to call her teacher “mighty.” 

The clock is ticking. 

If you go to the link, you can see the contract and analyze it for yourself. Astonishingly, it doesn’t have an arbitration clause, so at least we know there won’t be a fight about its enforceability!

(If you’re wondering about the applicability of the “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” movie, which Rowling did write, it’s a screenplay, and not a novel. Even if you want to fight about that, however, the contract further provides that Harry Potter has to be “part of the main plotline” of the novel, and “Fantastic Beasts” appears to focus on an earlier time in wizard history and doesn’t contain Harry Potter at all. So, even if you think a screenplay was included in the contract’s “novel” designation, it seems it still fails to fulfill the contract’s terms.)