Thursday, August 7, 2014

Flick Pick: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I and II)
(Warner Bros., 2010/11)

 I'm including both movies into one post this time, because it's functionally the same movie, just over 4 1/2 hours long (and ain't nobody got time for that), and it was split because Rowling's books grew in size with age like the national debt, plus of course WB, like any studio, was keen to milk every dollar from the franchise humanly possible. So splitting the last installment over two parts to do justice to the story was the simplest answer on how to make a bit over $2B dollars. The second installment did particular justice to the franchise, wrapping the story up with a suitably epic final confrontation between good and evil, while blowing every other movie of 2011 away, and being the first film in the series to top out at over $1B ($1.3B actually). Overall the series received 12 Oscar nominations (notably winning none), while over the course of a decade's work hauling in $7.7B in gross after Warner Bros. spent a total of about $1.2B for all eight installments, making it the highest grossing series of films of all time, where it's likely to remain, until they can make several more Marvel Avengers, James Bond, or Star Wars features to finally overtake it.

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