With Harry Potter, author J.K. Rowling created an endlessly fascinating hit. The ever-expanding wizarding world in her books has already inspired web hubs, theme parks, and, probably most important, movies. When Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone got the big-screen treatment in 2001 with director Chris Columbus, writer Steve Kloves, and stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, it was like the story of the boy with the lightning-bolt scar got a second, somehow more potent life. Sorcerer's Stone grossed almost $1 billion worldwide and created a hunger for more, more, more, more Potter experiences, justifying several more successful adaptations (including a two-parter!).
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | Warner Bros.
Rent the Potter movies on Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, etc.
After a nice run of a few months on HBO, the service dropped the movies, meaning you'll have to pony up for individual titles if you need to shoot Hogwarts straight into your veins. That means none of the major streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon) offer them as part of their subscription lineup, which is a bummer, but that's what happens when a movie or series is in high demand. A la carte it is.
Watch all the Harry Potter movies on TV, or stream on USA and SyFy.
The NBCUniversal channels will be the next best place to find the Hogwarts adventures. Warner Bros., which owns the rights to the films, recently moved the titles from Disney (read: Freeform) to USA and SyFy -- meaning more of those sporadic weekend Potter marathons could be around the corner.
If you have a cable subscription that includes USA and/or SyFy, you can also stream the movies on demand by going to the Harry Potter hubs on those channels' websites. Here's where you want to go for USA, and here's SyFy.
Keep an eye on streaming platforms' upcoming schedules.
HBO got the Potter movies for a few months at the beginning of 2018, which means if you weren't paying attention, you might have missed them. Be sure to check back regularly for what's coming to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and HBO.
We get it. Movies aren't always enough.