For all you Harry Potter fans out there, listen to this: Warner Brothers has recently announced that on December 29th, 2011, they will no longer be shipping new copies of any of the Harry Potter movies. This includes all the movies, from the first to the last two. Before you start to freak out, realize that Warner Bros. has decided to follow the Disney Vault model. What exactly is the Disney Vault model?
The Disney Vault model is when Disney (or in this case, Warner Bros.) films are only released for a certain period of time. Then, they are not sold for a while (usually several months) and re-released at a later date.
The reason that Harry Potter Fans are outraged is because Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 was released to DVD on November 11th, and since Warner Bros. is halting shipping December 29, consumers have only six weeks to purchase the movie. However, some fans seem to be unfazed by this limited amount of purchasing time such as Jennifer Temores ’13 who says, “If you wanted the DVD, you would have already bought it.” There is also the fact that the movies will be available in every other country except for the United States.
Rest assured, on December 29th the company will simply no longer ship new Harry Potter items, but the products not sold out yet will continue to be sold until the stores’ inventories no longer contain Harry Potter products. Basically, the stores will continue shipping Harry Potter products until December 29. After December 29, anything left in the stores’ inventories will continue being sold. It is estimated that the inventories will run out of products sometime in the beginning of 2012, as Entertainment Weekly posts.
The exact date at which the movies will be re-released is not known. What is known is that by the end of 2012 or the beginning of 2013, the films will be re-released and they might compile an “Ultimate Edition.”
There you have it Harry Potter fans. If you haven’t already bought the DVD yet, now is your chance to purchase it!
