Although the Wizarding World franchise is keeping afloat these days with the Fantastic Beasts movies, naturally there’s still a lot of fondness for the original Harry Potter film series nearly a decade after its last installment, The Deathly Hallows Part 2, came out. However, for those of you who were looking forward to streaming the Harry Potter movies soon, you’re out of luck, as they’re currently not on any services.
On the day that HBO Max launched back in late May, all eight Harry Potter movies were made available, which was surprising since it was disclosed months earlier that they wouldn’t be there right off the bat. That said, the movies’ time on HBO Max was relatively short, as they were taken off that service in late August and moved to Peacock in October. That window of availability was even shorter, as if you log onto Peacock now, the cinematic adaptations of the Boy Who Lived’s epic story are nowhere to be found.
Why is this? Well, thanks to legal deals hashed out long before HBO Max and Peacock launched, NBCUniversal controls the broadcast and cable rights to the Harry Potter movies through the end of 2025. There was some finagling accomplished to put the movies on Peacock in November, but as a result of the aforementioned legal deals, they now must leave the streaming service and will continue to be shown alongside the Fantastic Beasts movies on the Syfy and USA networks.
So while it’s a shame that Peacock subscribers no longer have access to the Harry Potter movies, it’s not like this magical film series is difficult to track down. One can simply keep an eye out for airings occurring on Syfy and USA, although if you’re not much of a traditional TV viewer, you can always just buy physical or digital versions of the movies so you can watch them at your own leisure and not worry about commercial breaks.
It’s also worth noting that just because the Harry Potter movies are gone from streaming now doesn’t mean it will stay this way for a long time. Reportedly there are plans to put them back on Peacock “in windows” throughout 2021. Considering the popularity of the Harry Potter film series, one can logically assume that there are other plans in motion to put the movies back on Peacock in the years to follow, and once NBCUniversal’s deal expires, you can be sure that WarnerMedia will want to put the movies on HBO Max as soon as possible.
The Harry Potter film series isn’t the only major franchise that’s recently found itself being removed from a streaming service after a short period of time. The original Jurassic Park trilogy was available on Peacock’s opening day, but those movies were soon shifted to Netflix afterwards, and now they’ve since left that service too. It just goes to show that if you really want to ensure that you’ll have continuous access to a movie or entire film series, you’re better off buying your own copies.
The Wizarding World saga will continue when Fantastic Beasts 3 works its magic in theaters on November 12, 2021. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for updates on how the threequel is coming along, and learn what other movies are supposed to come out next year with our 2021 release schedule.
