There are Blu-Ray collections, and then there are Blu-Ray collections, and Warner Bros. certainly intends to put the crown jewel on their multi-billion dollar Harry Potter franchise with its announcement of a massive, $500 Blu-Ray limited-edition and numbered collection of all eight films in the series. You can check the listing for it on Amazon, where some details emerge, such as the fact that there are a full 18 movie discs in the collection (including DVD copies of each film, because of of course you need those if you have a Blu-Ray player), with extended cuts of the first and second films and separate 3D discs for the last two films in the series, as well as 13 special feature discs, including all previously released special features as well as five new hours of content. It also apparently "includes multiple specially-produced, collectable memorabilia items, including concept art, a Map of Hogwarts and much more!" Also included is the fancy box above, which, to be fair, is pretty neat-looking. You also get Ultraviolet "copies" of each film, for those of you who care about that.
Still: five hundred dollars. That's a shitload of money for eight films which can currently be purchased on Amazon for 80 dollars in a Blu-Ray collection. It's not the most lavish special edition ever released, since Scarface had a special edition with fancy humidor that retailed for a cool grand, and that was for a single movie. No word on a release date yet, aside from the fact that it should be coming down sometime this year. Normally I'd say that this would be prepped for an early November release to capitalize on Christmas shopping, but if they're already announcing it now, one would think that it'd be coming a bit sooner than that.
Warner Bros. is suitably proud of their achievements in bringing Harry Potter to the big screen (even if I'd say that the books are still the "real" Potter experience), so it makes sense that they'd want to release something suitably epic to crown their biggest franchise. Still, man: five hundred dollars. (To be fair, Amazon is already cutting the price down to $350.)
based solely on that picture. that box looks really flimsy and "cardboardy". for 500 bucks i was expecting like a high quality wooden thing. not something that looks like cardboard and balsa wood lol
$350 on Amazon? Not bad for hardcore uber die hard fans? Sure.
The lack of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans makes this a complete rip-off.
I got the 10 disc Matrix boxset for £10 on DVD. Thusly, I shall spend no more than £50 on this Blu-Ray boxset.
Also, I've said this before; whoever spent $1k on a single movie and a fucking wooden box is the definition of either an idiot or a rapstar. They may well be the same thing.
This is ridiculous. I can't imagine ever getting 500 dollars worth of enjoyment out of that elementary school diorama.
Fuck me. That's pretty intense.
I remember seeing the Lion King trilogy for around £80 in HMV, it was in a awesome wooden box with the imagery burned into it and came complete with a recording of the stage play plus the soundtrack (the stage version is amazing btw), and this thing is made of cardboard? come on WB :-/
@Zaccheus said:
This was my exact thoughts. It looks crazy.
That's far too expensive. 31 discs for $500? I'd pay a maximum of $250 but that set is definitely worth shelling over five hundred dollars on.
That is a lot of money for 8 movies. I wouldn't pay more than $300 even if I was a huge fan ($30x8=$240+packaging=~$300). And that is retail pricing...
I am hoping this is like the Lord of the Rings Extended Blu-Rays, using a mix of Blu-ray and DVD. There is no way they need to have all the extras, especially for the older films, on Blu-ray discs. The formatting and scaling would be gnarly for anything not HD and it would be cheaper to produce. Otherwise, if they are using 31 dual-layer Blu-ray discs that is a 139.5 Hours of 1080P Video or an average of ~17 Hours dedicated to each film (if all of the extras and such are in 1080P as well).
problem with fancy boxes is that they aren't convenient. after the initial "oohh" they become a pain in the ass.
Considering that most of the special features and extra content is coming from the already released Three-Disc Ultimate Edition Blu-ray set which you can get for less than $40 a movie, this thing is a bit exorbitant. I mean, I am a huge fan of all of the Harry Potter series, but you're paying $200 for 5 hours of 'unreleased' footage (which I guarantee will be on Youtube the second this set is released) and an, albeit fancy, cardboard box, it's a bit much.
That being said, as soon as it falls under 200 bucks, I could see myself getting it.
If I loved the movies as much as I used to love the books (years ago), I would've been all over this. Fortunately, I never much cared for the movies. They are good, at least some of them, but does not get me excited.
Thats kinda awesome but thats about 400 bucks more than i'd pay hell id even go 150
The hardcore fans don't really enjoy the movies.
The sad part is, there will be people who actually buy this.
One has to ask themselves, "Where the hell am I going to put this?!" Looks like it'll get beat up or torn in a short while.I'll stick to the $80 Blu-Ray version.