20 years later, and streaming Harry Potter is still too complicated

Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone (or Philosopher’s Stone, depending on your locality) hit movie theaters 20 years ago today. It kicked off the eight-film adaptation of the massively popular children’s book series, which concluded with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 a decade ago in 2011.

In that time, the Potter films have become a magnet for marathoning, driven in no small part by fan-favorite Freeform (née ABC Family) broadcasts of the films. ABC actually picked up the rights to the series just weeks after the first film had even hit theaters, reportedly spending roughly $140 million to be able to broadcast the first two movies.

The network spent the next decade collecting the broadcast rights to the remaining films as they were released, culminating in the debut of Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in winter 2013. Freeform would go on to spend the next half-decade regularly airing the full Potter saga across weekends, particularly around the holidays (which holiday didn’t particularly matter).

Unlike most major properties, Harry Potter spent the bulk of its two decades of existence unavailable on streaming services, aside from brief stints at HBO. It was a relic of an older, pre-internet era of films, where TV rights and DVD sales were the priority of the day after box office receipts, and the idea of Netflix as a streaming service was just a glimmer of an idea in Reed Hasting’s head.

That all ended in 2016, though. Disney’s ABC rights were set to expire at the end of 2017, and the Potter franchise was suddenly a hugely valuable chip to Warner Bros. to license out to whoever was willing to pay the price. The rights were split up, with NBCUniversal getting the cable rights on SyFy and USA (and its digital platforms) for an estimated $250 million, with streaming going to Warner Bros. sister company HBO.

The timing here is also key. 2016 was years before AT&T would buy Time Warner, the creation of WarnerMedia, or the announcement that the newly branded company would be forming its own streaming service, which would eventually go on to be called HBO Max.

In 2021, having popular fan-favorite streaming content is essential, a lesson that’s been proven time and again by the pricey purchases of rights for things like Seinfeld or The Office. But that lesson was far less clear when the Potter rights were last up in the air. And now, with NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia both trying to get their own streaming service to take off, having the Harry Potter movies for recreating those rose-tinted memories of ABC Family weekends has become more important than ever.

The result is a dizzying tug of war between the two services that’s seen the Potter films bounce back and forth from Peacock to HBO Max and back again every few months since the two services both launched in April and May 2020.

As of publication time, the series is available on both platforms (for now), but with NBCUniversal’s deal not set to…