Harry Pulling a Dissapearing Act

Warner Bros. has come up with quite an interesting marketing scheme that has to do with the Harry Potter Saga. They are going to be pulling all copies of the Harry Potter DVD and Blu-Rays from store shelves and late December and not allowing them to be reordered until a new version is released.

This is quite a bold move on Warner Bros. part with no guarantee of a new version of the DVD or Blu Ray being made any time soon after the pull. This means if you are thinking of getting a hold of a physical copy of any of the Harry Potter movies you better act quick because that leaves a little over two months until they are going to be pulling a disappearing act. Added on to all this Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is being shipped on November 11^th in the U.S and as late as December 2^nd in the U.K so that could mean you have as little as a month to grab the last part of the Saga in DVD format which might make quite a few fans with lower incomes quite mad.

            However pulling away from fan backlash and immediate loss in DVD and Blu-Ray sales there is something to say about this marketing strategy. The most obvious impact would be a since they aren’t pulling Harry Potter from stores for forever but rather until they have a new and possibly more expensive version to be released, when this does actually come out they will have a much higher demand for it since the public has been deprived of the one who lived for so long. Since the only information released to date has been about the physical DVDs it could be a push to digital distribution from places like iTunes.

            However I cannot ignore the risk Warner Bros. is taking with this very risky business move. First off if they wait too long or not long enough with the release of a new version of these movies on DVD the hoards of fans that have flocked to this universe could mean major backlash to the studio causing possible boycotts of other movies from a passionate fan base feeling insulted by this move. As well as if they decide to pull legal digital downloads from the net they are just spurring on the pirating community to get the movies the only way they know how, by illegally downloading them.

            So this leaves Warner Bros. in a very bright spot in Harry Potter fans for now weather or not this works for them or against them is to be seen when the movies are actually pulled from store shelves.