Peacock has acquired short-term rights to all eight Harry Potter films from Warner Bros.
The films will be available on the streaming service for six months starting in October.
Announcement of the rights acquisition comes right after the Harry Potter movies were used to launch WarnerMedia’s own subscription streaming service, HBO Max. Peacock and its parent company, Comcast/NBCUniversal, are tied to the franchise largely through the Harry Potter attractions at Universal Studios theme parks.
The eight Harry Potter theatrical releases generated more than $7.7 billion in global box office revenue from 2001-2011.
“We’ve built a world-class collection of iconic movies and shows, and we will continue to expand the film library with treasured titles from NBCUniversal and beyond that will surprise and delight Peacock customers time and time again,” said Frances Manfredi, president of content acquisition and strategy for Peacock.
Peacock, like every other platform that relies on original programming, is looking to fill the voice created by the Hollywood production studio business being largely shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So adding eight event feature films to the search and recommendation engine will beef up programming options on the service.
NBCU announced last week that it had reached 10 million signups for Peacock.
