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‘Harry Potter’ countdown: Are DVD buyers still under the wizard’s spell?

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Our countdown to ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ has included a revealing late-night conversation with director David Yates, a look at the visual effects behind the spooky Inferi hordes and an enlightening chat with screenwriter Steve Kloves. Today we veer more toward commerce than art as business reporter Claudia Eller gives us an analysis of the home-video marketplace challenges for the boy-wizard of the box office.

Harry Potter, the teen wizard whose films have generated billions of dollars and become one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises, is known for battling the evil Lord Voldemort. Now he’s about to confront an even darker foe: A soft DVD market.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,’ the sixth installment in the Warner Bros. film series, will be released July 15, and expectations are that it will be one of the year’s biggest blockbusters. The previous five ‘Potter’ movies have generated $7.2 billion in worldwide box-office and DVD sales, reaping huge profits for the studio and Potter’s creator, author J.K. Rowling.

But the movie world that ‘Half-Blood Prince’ will enter is markedly different from the one that its predecessor, ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,’ faced when it was released in 2007. Over the last two years, DVD sales, which have long propped up the movie business, have sharply declined. The slump in the DVD market has undermined Hollywood’s business model and cast a shadow over what used to be the industry’s bright spot.

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‘There’s been a fairly substantial shrinkage in the overall DVD market since the last ‘Harry Potter’ film came out,’ said Tom Adams, a home video industry analyst. According to Adams, DVD sales were down 9% in 2008 and he’s projecting that they will fall an additional 8% in 2009.

‘That puts much more performance pressure on these big franchise titles to succeed,’ he said.

Though the ‘Potter’ movies have historically been huge DVD sellers, each successive sequel has sold far fewer units than its predecessor. Sales of the last release were off 15% in the first eight weeks compared with sales of the first film during the same time span. Even a small decline in DVD sales is a challenge for expensive movies because it raises the bar to profitability that much higher.

And the bar for ‘Harry Potter’ is higher than ever. Warner Bros. spent $250 million to produce ‘Half-Blood Prince’ and will invest $155 million to market and distribute the movie, according to people familiar with the situation.

Compared with other big-budget sequels, the incremental costs for each ‘Potter’ film have been moderate, mostly because of salary increases for cast members and unfavorable foreign exchange rates. For example, when Warner Bros. began shooting ‘Half-Blood Prince’ outside London in September 2007, the dollar was so weak against the British pound that it added roughly $15 million to the production cost.

Warner Bros. President Alan Horn said that the sixth ‘Potter’ was worth taking a gamble on given all the money the franchise has generated for the studio and its corporate parent, Time Warner Inc.

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‘I think it’s as comfortable a risk as we can have,’ Horn said.

Aside from box-office and DVD revenue, Warner Bros. reaps hundreds of millions of dollars from merchandise, video games and other sales, including digital downloads on iTunes.

Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, said profit margins were higher on distribution platforms such as video on demand and electronic sell-through because there were no manufacturing and shipping costs and the studio retained more revenue than it did from DVD rentals and sales.

‘Even in a declining market, our profitability can go up,’ said Tsujihara, who declined to discuss ‘Potter’ specifics.

Horn said he didn’t expect the soft DVD market to hamper sales of ‘Half-Blood Prince’ because it was a ‘unique property.’ He believes that although budget-conscious consumers have become more selective about the DVDs they purchase, they have been demonstrating a desire to own big films like ‘Potter,’ ‘Transformers,’ ‘Twilight’ and Warner Bros.’ ‘The Dark Knight,’ which according to The-Numbers.com was 2008’s top DVD with more than 12.7 million units sold domestically.

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-- Claudia Eller

RECENT AND RELATED

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Scaring up the Inferi -- the visual effects behind the horror

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‘Half-Blood Prince’ screenwriter tells of a ‘haunting moment’

On the ‘Half Blood’ set: A chat with Jim Broadbent

After the magic: Hollywood prepares for life without ‘Potter’

‘Harry Potter’ meets Christopher Robin? It’s ‘The Unwritten’

Vive le Potter! J.K. Rowling honored in France

STILL WANT MORE? All ‘HARRY POTTER’ coverage at Hero Complex

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PHOTO CREDITS: Actor Jim Broadbent and director David Yates on the set of ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,’ by Jaap Buitendij/Warner Bros.

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