For years, there is no other franchise that rivals Harry Potter. It has dominated the book-seller lists as well as commanded supremacy in the box-office, making it as the most successful movie franchise of all time. The fan base is very big and the attention these fans generate is unrivaled.
However when the sixth Potter movie, The Half-Blood Prince was bumped by studio execs into the summer movie season (it was supposed to be released last November), another best-seller turned into a movie moved into its spot and commanded attention. This is Twilight – the teen vampire books written by Stephenie Meyer – whose rabid fan base put the book and movie into the mainstream map and the attention of everybody.
Now that Potter is back and the Twilight franchise has so far is the “center” of the teen attention, is there room for both?
In an article by the Wall Street Journal, writer Lauren A.E. Schuker, explores the teen attention the two book franchise gets. The two maybe different in the sense of how its written and what the stories explores but they are also connected as they share more than just rabid fans but also actors. The lead actor of Twilight, Robert Pattinson, is an alumna of Harry Potter – having acted in two Potter films. And, Jamie Campbell Bower who plays vampire Cauis is going to portray Gellert Grindewald, the evil wizard that caught the affection of Albus Dumbledore.
Here is an excerpt of her article:
As a new “Harry Potter” movie opens next week, the bespectacled wizard faces a new challenge: how to compete for the attention of a young audience that has been growing up—and is starting to prefer the angsty teen romances and cooler, edgier characters of the “Twilight” books and movies.
The film moves directly into territory where “Twilight” now rules. The sixth “Potter” movie, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” has a distinctly more grown-up tone than its predecessors and features a strong romantic plotline.
Hollywood marketing executives say that these days the “Twilight” franchise has influenced almost every studio marketing campaign that targets teenage girls. Some posters for the upcoming “Potter” film echo “Twilight”’s emphasis on romance. One features Harry and his crush, Ginny, gazing longingly into each others’ eyes, in a pose reminiscent of “Twilight”’s now-iconic image of its star-crossed lovers, Bella and Edward. Another shows Harry’s friend Ron with his girlfriend Lavender, while a jealous Hermione scowls in the background.
Warner Bros. and the team behind “Potter” say they didn’t take the “Twilight” franchise into account when designing their marketing materials for “The Half-Blood Prince.” Instead, they crafted a campaign aimed to resonate with previous “Potter” films, the executives and filmmakers say, dismissing the notion that there is a rivalry between the franchises among fans.
“With all due respect to “Twilight,” the longevity and world-wide success of the Harry Potter franchise speaks for itself,” a studio representative said.
The previous five “Potter” films have grossed almost $4.5 billion in world-wide box-office revenue, making the franchise one of the biggest in history. J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” books have sold more than 400 million copies world-wide, compared with 53 million for Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series. But after 10 years on the New York Times best-seller list, the “Potter” books fell off the children’s-series list last May, and since then have returned only intermittently. Meanwhile, the “Twilight” books have spent 100 weeks on the chart.
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