The bigger question to me is do the now nearly 40 year-olds that were the main Potter fans in the late 90s to late 2000's really want to see another adaptation? Especially as I don't think there was a major sense that the films were bad or disliked.
The adaptation isn't for the 40 yr olds. It's for the new batch of 10 yr olds who look at any movie their parents watched and think of it as "old". They are hoping there's a blue ocean of fans that were born since 2016 that are ready for HP to take over their little brains.
Personally, I separate the art from the artist. I mean, to give an example, Tolkien was a staunch Catholic who would not agree with many people today who enjoy his work, but they don't think about that, do they? And who knows how many of the CEOs of companies we enjoy products of are just like JKR or worse, but because we know nothing of their beliefs, we still support those companies.
As other folks have said, it's easy when Tolkien's dead. And as you point out we don't know these other folks.
Everyone makes their personal compromises, and everyone has a different moral event horizon. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism as the saying goes. But it's absolutely reasonable to look at an artist you think is a bigot (or rapist, fascist, general piece of shit, whatever) and say "nah, fam, fuck you and your shit straight into the sun". Fuck Jo, fuck Cosby, fuck Picasso, Kevin Spacey, Luc Besson, Kid Rock, Neil Gaiman...
Fuck 'em all. There's plenty of artists in the world making good shit every day. I won't run out if I toss them in the bin.
But truly the main question was asked above: will those over-40 fans show up to buy the figures?
This is a good question. And yeah, my guess is it might be enough to get a wave or two, the major characters perhaps, but I see it going the way of the Indiana Jones line.
Not to derail things, but if you had a 12-year-old kid who said they wanted to read Harry Potter, would you discourage that due to JK?
Unlike say a Roald Dahl, who I think some of his views on race can be found in his books at times (looking at you Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator), Rowling's anti-trans stuff isn't found in the books near as I can tell, while the content of the books are pretty good in terms of social messaging overall.
No, because at 12 I'd be more concerned about the kid becoming a lover of reading in general.
However, I'd probably encourage it to be a library loan and I'd definitely put a pin in it to have a talk with the kid about authorship at some point (because they'll need to learn sometime).
Also, ALSO, I would 100% steer them towards the Tiffany Aching books. If you just
MUST have a bildungsroman about a young magical person who signs on for tutorship from older witches, Tiffany's right there, yo. For one, Terry was a better writer than Jo will ever be (fight me). For two, he was a much more humanistic writer *especially* in those books. For three, we know where he stood on trans issues, he wrote a whole fantasy book dissecting gender and wove it through many of his other works besides. For four, he's got 40+ books to her seven and I'd be ok with a kid pretty reading all of the ones I've read so far. That'll keep'em busy for ages longer.
