Harry Potter and the DVD Vaulting Scandal
July 15th, 2011, the Regal movie theater located in Deer Park. The stroke of midnight hits and both the lobby and all sixteen theaters are filled with Harry Potter fans of all ages and sizes. Lifetime young adult fans are openly crying, all eager to see if the final film does justice to conclude the book series they have grown up to love. Emotion was in the air simply because it would be the last Harry Potter release fans would enjoy. But this doesn’t mean that Harry Potter is over forever. The movies will always be there for both collectors and newcomers to the series curious to see what all the hype was about, right?
Well, not necessarily. The Harry Potter DVD’s look like they could be disappearing for a long time. In late October, Warner Brothers announced their plan to stop shipping new Harry Potter DVD’s of all kinds, and pulling the rest from shelves after December 29th, just 6 weeks after the release of the final film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 on blu-ray and DVD, which released on November 11th.
Upon hearing this, one would definitely ask why Warner Brothers would commit such an atrocity. When looking at the numbers of how much the films have grossed, it could maybe be assumed that Warner Brothers is looking for an opportunity to make more money. Deathly Hallows Part 2 alone grossed over a billion dollars in the international box office, and overall, the Harry Potter film series has grossed over 7.7 billion dollars over the course of 10 years, making it the highest grossing film series of all time. With the highest grossing film in the series now available for home media, and a fancy new, blu ray box set hitting the stores just in time for the holiday season, Warner Brothers is pulling a Disney marketing move by pressuring fans to purchase the movie within a set time frame in order to make as much profit as possible in a small amount of time.
“I think Warner Brothers is vaulting all of the Harry Potter DVD’s to raise the demand and value of the Harry Potter series…” says Hills West Junior Danielle Sacco. “But if you think about how large the Harry Potter franchise is and how much Deathly Hallows alone made on its opening weekend, they don’t really need to make their products more valuable.
Reception among Harry Potter fans all over High School West has been universally negative. “I think in a way it’s good for making money but also I don’t think they should vault the DVD’s because people don’t really have a lot of money to go out and buy all the movies in the first place so if they ever wanted to go and buy one in a couple of months the wouldn’t be able to,” says Junior Lauren Miller, longtime fan of the Harry Potter series.
Although this could just be a moneymaking strategy, it could also be that Warner Brothers is actually going to repackage the DVD’s a few years down the road. There is a small shed of light though as international markets refuse to follow through with this plan. Harry Potter DVD’s will only come off the American markets, yet it can almost be guaranteed that many people will put them up for sale on the internet the second they are removed from the market. Still, it is hard to predict whether this is all just a marketing scandal, or whether Harry Potter truly will be disappearing store shelves across the nation.
