Jul 10, 2009 01:08 PM
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Hollywood, 4:03 AM
Wed Feb 10
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Supernatural-obsessed youngsters are delicate creatures to cater to. Just ask the producers of Harry Potter and Twilight. The juggernauts often square off in ideological combat, but when it comes to their movies, they mostly stay far away from each other.
The Wall Street Journal does a little comparative study of the two franchises' marketing strategies, focusing mainly on the about-to-drop (squee!) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. See, there's a little romance in that book, and Twilight is all about romance, so is that vampire story's mega success responsible for the HP posters that front-and-center tout hot, hot teen wizard love? The producers say no!
"With all due respect to "Twilight," the longevity and world-wide success of the Harry Potter franchise speaks for itself," a studio representative said.
Ha. As it should be. Twilight is a blip on the cultural radar compared to the Harry Potter phenomenon—the provenance of chastely horny teenage girls and lonely, approaching middle age hobby LARPers, whereas Harry and Co. have the mass and broad appeal of a Da Vinci Code (only they're much, much better.) Though, if we're honest with our Potter-obsessed selves, it's hard to believe that the smoldering and yearning of Twilight—such catnip!—had nothing to do with the smoldering and yearning poster shown here.
The Twilight producers, for their part, are respectably cognizant of their big brother's long shadow:
"It's the only franchise that we ever pay attention to," says Rob Friedman, chief executive and co-chairman of Summit Entertainment. "We are very cognizant of where they are, and we've always been wary of being in too close proximity to ‘Harry Potter' because we know our fans cross over so much, and we definitely don't want to compete with ‘Harry' for attention."
Damn right. Wizard beats vampire, every time.
Send an email to Richard Lawson, the author of this post, at richardl@gawker.com.
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