The “Harry Potter” and “Jurassic Park” franchises will have new homes despite being available on two new debuting streaming services, HBO Max and Peacock, respectively.
What’s going on?
The entire “Harry Potter” franchise debuted on HBO Max in May.
Similarly, the “Jurassic Park” franchise appeared on Peacock when the streaming service launched last week.
However, the two film franchises will now find new homes. “Harry Potter” will leave HBO Max at the end of August, HBO Max said in a release to the Deseret News. “Harry Potter” has been signed to a long-term deal with NBCUniversal, which suggests it’ll appear on the company’s cable networks and Peacock, per The Verge.
The first three films of “Jurassic Park” will move to Netflix on Aug. 1.
This has happened before to other streaming services. For example, “Home Alone” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” had to leave Disney Plus during the early days of the streaming service due to licensing and distribution rights, as I wrote about for Deseret.com.
Deadline had a good explanation for how it works:
Licensing and distribution has become a dense thicket for business affairs and legal teams to slice their way through, with properties assumed to be in-house often winding up somewhere else due to legacy dealmaking. Until quite recently — and even still, in many cases — licensing titles to third parties was the way of the world. Now, traditional companies are trying to lock up more of their own properties, though that can be expensive.
There are plenty of streaming services out there for you to choose from. Head over to my explainer piece that will showcase what each popular service brings you.