It looks like the folks at Warner Bros are taking a page from the Disney playbook. It’s been announced that as of December, you won’t be able to buy copies of Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban. On February of 2007, Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire disappears too.
Our friends over at Cinematical give us this:
Why are they doing this? I imagine they want little Harry all to themselves, kept under lock and key, only to be brought out for super-special occasions. Actually, it’s a fairly common move (Disney does it all the time), and seeing as this is a non-Potter holiday season, Warners wants to beef up sales and, potentially, start building hype for what’s sure to be a plethora of special edition, HD or Blue-Ray DVDs to follow.
You know… I just don’t like this. Yes, it seems to make sense from a business point of view… but there just seems to be something inheritantly wrong with making it difficult for your fans to get your stuff.
The Harry Potter fans (of which I’m not one) have made JK Rowling and WB a LOT of money. More than the net worth of some countries. And how are they saying “thank you” to those devoted Potter fans? By saying “Screw you… you can only have these when we say you can have them”. I find something very disrespectful and wrong with that.
Your thoughts?