English Audio Request

Warner Bros’ initial reluctance to make the films appears odd only because it has had such success with them. With six movies out and two to come, the series has sold $1.7 billion-worth of cinema tickets in America and $3.7 billion elsewhere. In America each Harry Potter film has been among the top five sellers on DVD and VHS tape, even in years when the films were released in November and December. In July Variety, a trade magazine, reported that worldwide DVD sales amounted to $2.7 billion. Throw in a few hundreds of millions of dollars more for television advertising. Between January and October of this year the Harry Potter films were shown 65 times in America, according to Nielsen. Yet the torrent of money, impressive though it is, greatly understates Harry Potter’s effect on Hollywood.
In 2001, as the first film in the series headed for cinemas, executives and media pundits speculated that Harry Potter might come to rival “Batman”, a series that then numbered four big-budget films. The contrast is revealing. “Batman” was a good example of a 1990s blockbuster-film franchise. It had big stars in Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton (and, later, George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger). The films went steadily downhill, both in quality and in box-office performance, as the condition known as “sequelitis” took hold.
Harry Potter is a wholly different product. Instead of A-listers the films feature hitherto obscure child actors and British theatrical talent. Perhaps the biggest star is Alan Rickman, previously known to American cinema-goers (if at all) as the villain in “Die Hard”. Over time they have faded neither commercially nor artistically. If anything the reverse is true. After the first two films the Harry Potter franchise was handed to non-American directors more associated with independent film and television. Alfonso Cuarón, Mike Newell and David Yates have been given a good deal of autonomy by Warner Bros.