How did Harry Potter become this colossal worldwide?

- Harry Potter is the best-selling book series in history with over 500 million books sold.
- Harry Potter is the highest-grossing film series in history with almost $8 billion in worldwide gross.
- Harry Potter is one of the biggest and most valuable brands in the world with a worth of over $25 billion.

The books have sold more copies than Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Twilight and Hunger Games combined. The eight films have grossed more than the twenty-four James Bond films.

How did it reach this level of unprecedented fame and popularity?

Seems like an odd question to get from someone who chose "Snape" for their username.

In any case, I think it's a mix of factors. The prevalence of Western media across the globe, the widely accessible material that can be enjoyed by people of all ages/genders/etc, the rich fantasy world-building that encourages greater engagement with the material...the list goes on.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

If anything, it's a perfectly suitable question from someone who chose 'Snape' as their username. I'm curious as to how my favorite franchise became this massive worldwide. Either way, thanks for your reply.

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Always.

This really.

I always find the magic combo is something that everyone can enjoy, Titanic for example, the women love it for the love story, the men for the disaster aspect.

Something that irks me about the films though is the fact that none of them were particularly well done, like I wouldn't rate any of them higher than a 6/10.

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What Iro and Gandalf are saying. JK Rowling is good at writing books that appeal to both adults and kids; she's not a fantastic writer or anything but she can write simple yet fairly clever and witty stories. They are mostly straightforward with a fair amount of action and suspense that translates to the screen quite well.

I'm not really a fan i watched the first four as well as read the first four books but i went off it and haven't watched or read any further. It's a completely inoffensive and fairly well done series though, something i'd probably introduce my kids to if i have any at least to try and get them interested in reading.

I don't even know what I talk about, but just like the before said plus I believe it really have really2 good marketing, I mean not in the bad ways.

She is the JRR Tolkien of this generation. An easier read than Rings, but unlike the trilogy, Potter is aimed specifically for kids. I only saw the first movie, felt it was solid for a kids movie, and never saw any others. Id have my kids watch it.

Now if I was a little kid? Id be fanboy frenzied and touting the series loudly. Its good, but Im more Game of Thrones than Harry Potter. Is Potter better than Thrones? No, but it can appeal to a much much larger audience, hence the colossal success worldwide. Its not about how good it is, its how many people think its good.

It's what has been said. The books in particular are incredibly well thought and appeal to a vast public.

The movies, however, live solely from almost "brainless" fandom, because most of them are quite bad, that would never have had any success if is wasn't for the huge market already created.

POtttter!

How did Harry Potter become this colossal worldwide?

I don't know? I've never read a Harry Potter book or seen any of the movies.

Then you're the exception rather than the rule. I don't think I know a single person in my life that has neither read a Harry Potter book nor seen any of the films.

I don't conect any HP movies to innovation at all and I don't see how you could! Could you state some examples?

I loved the books though, I've read each one dozens of times!

I think it's a an idea deriving from general aspects rather than anything specific. The film sets, the costume designs, the cast and crew, the cinematography, the visual effects, the music - these are all factors that made the Harry Potter films innovative. They weren't just different as is, they were different on a massive scale. The film sets, costume designs and crew are described as revolutionary in diversity and size. At the same time, the films were a big part of the digital revolution of making films.

Another important aspect with the Harry Potter films is that they maintained a high level of quality throughout; think of other film series that had great potential such as Narnia and Hunger Games. The films went down in quality as the series aged. There aren't many film series that stretch on past two or three films, let alone eight, that have managed to maintain a high level of quality all the way through. The Harry Potter films - and books for that matter - are well-known in this regard; it's one of the reasons Harry Potter stayed extremely popular throughout the span of the films and beyond.

In the same year there was a small movie series that started called Lord of the Rings also based on books. Tell me what Harry Potter did more original or better than LotR!

And the fact that you're comparing Harry Potter to Narnia or Hunger Games as if it was very hard to be better than those movies is not a good argument, IMO. The Harry Potter books made a huge impact in a whole generation, I agree with that. But if it wasn't for the market the books created the movies would have had the same ending as Eragon, for example.
LotR however, were already well known because of Tolkien, but the movies changed the way people look at fantasy films. That was a revolution!

I still haven't figured out why HP is astonishingly popular around the globe. It's still impenetrable to me. Or maybe it's just the most obvious and stupid answer, it's simple, an vague and appeal to kids of both genders.

I only ever saw the first film in the series, which was quite unremarkable, as well as the final one (DH2) which somehow manged to be even more unremarkable.

The HP franchise, is at least not as obnoxious as the FF franchise, but it isn't on I like either.

As with any other series, it is not recommended to watch the first film, and then move directly on to the last one - especially in a series of eight films. Watching the final film without watching any of the connected films bar the first one impairs the experience. The first film was, objectively speaking, remarkable in its own right when it came out in 2001, and while the same cannot be said for the final film because films had come so far at this point, it is considered a very good film by the general public - much more so I would assume if you've watched the other films in the series first.

The posts about feminism have been spun off into this thread.

Simple, it got record numbers of kids and teens to line up for reading.

Harry Potter and the Literacy Phenomenon
http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/fe...ue10/literacy/

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