With the much anticipated release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince next Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal recently took a look at how the franchise is being challenged for young adults attention by the most recent series of books to be made into movies: Twilight.  The Harry Potter franchise is facing competition for their market for the first time in their series.  The Wall Street Journal states that they’ve had to alter some of the marketing campaigns and that they could have also been impacted when they moved the release date from November 2008 to Mid-Summer 2009.  Has the challenge changed the way Potter is being presented?  Warners Brothers states that it hasn’t changed any marketing campaigns on account of Twilight, and is still reaching their loyal audience it’s been building since the first movie was released in 2001.

Warner Bros. says the “Potter” movies have become more grown-up in order to follow the narrative of the books and to appeal to an audience that’s getting older. Nearly a decade has elapsed since the “Potter” producers cast an 11-year-old Daniel Radcliffe in the pivotal role of Harry. “As the characters and storylines of the Harry Potter films have matured, our marketing materials have followed suit,” says a studio representative. (A 2006 survey found that the average age kids started reading the series was 9 and that nearly 60% of kids aged 9 to 11 had read it.)

Read the full article here.