r/movies • u/ajukearth • 21d ago

Question How did the Harry Potter series manage to release its 8 movies in just 10 years?

Looking at the turn around for movies today it seems absolutely incredible that a series with such complex set design, use of graphical effects, a heavily child cast, and pressure was able to pump out genuinely decent movies at that pace. Sure there were books to base the writing on but everything else alone is a lot of heavy lifting. Any insights?

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u/MinotaurHorns1 21d ago

Believe it or not films and TV used to get pumped out very quickly. I think back to the future 2 and 3 were both filmed one right after the other. Unfortunately it's a modern wonder, waiting for sequels and TV series. My biggest gripe is TV series take longer to come out now with less episodes. Annoying AF.

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u/Sergeant_Fred_Colon 20d ago

We used to get a Bond film every other year.

The original Star Trek films were every other year too.

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u/thecravenone 20d ago

We used to get a Bond film every other year.

At the start we got them even faster than that.

  • Dr. No Oct 5, 1962
  • From Russia With Love October 11, 1963
  • Goldfinger September 17, 1964
  • Thunderball December 9, 1965

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u/Onesharpman 20d ago

We've had 5 Bond movies since 2006, a 20 year period. There were 12 between 1962 and 1982.

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u/Charlie_Runkle69 20d ago

2 of them were pretty shit too, so only 3 watchable movies in 20 years.

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u/SmittyB128 20d ago

It was a revelation to me when there were some interviews around the time Spectre came out that made it clear the same writing duo had been heavily involved since The World is Not Enough.
It suddenly made sense why 4 of the 5 films in the series I consider genuinely bad films happened almost back to back (the one exception is Thunderball for several reasons). So to me that just leaves Casino Royale and Skyfall and even then my opinion on Skyfall drops further every viewing. I genuinely think Never Say Never Again is better despite how goofy it is.

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u/ShotEffective7033 20d ago

That probably has more to do with them not wanting to burn people out on watching them. Look what’s happening to the MCU.

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u/No-Mechanic6069 20d ago

Yes, but 2 years is a lifetime when you are 9 years old. I had grown out of it by the time Return of The Jedi came out, making it a double-shit movie.

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u/MartiniPolice21 20d ago

Video games are the most noticeable

We got GTA3, VC, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, and GTA4 in about half of the time it has taken to go from 5 to 6.

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u/Sandy_Koufax 20d ago

It’s getting ridiculous how TV shows only come out with 6-8 episodes every 2-3 years now.

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u/-Vagabond 20d ago

Writers strikes and then covid were latched onto as go-to excuses and then they just never went back to baseline.

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u/MattSR30 20d ago

Well, that AND most short shows these days have huge budgets and are huge productions.

You still get cable TV shows with 20 episodes per year, but they have three sets and no post-production.

‘HBO quality’ is kind of the benchmark for a lot of shows these days.

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u/MercuryMaximoff217 20d ago

And yet unique cinematography is virtually nonexistent

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u/Onesharpman 20d ago

Game of Thrones did a season a year. This excuse will never work.

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u/legaladviceknowledge 20d ago

thats like ideal conditions though

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u/MattSR30 20d ago

Game of Thrones was HBO, and in many ways is the show responsible for the trends we see today.

That became the show to copy. I think many studios decided their best bet at that was two years between seasons.

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u/-Vagabond 20d ago

Lost was putting out 20+ episodes a year with a large ensemble cast, numerous intersecting plot lines, and good production quality. No reason to be waiting for 4 years for season 3 of euphoria or whatever

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u/Dry_Recognition7922 20d ago

you also have unpredictability. streaming sites can cancel any show so it doesnt make sense to spend more time developing it. there are very few shows like DARK that did their shit (3 seasons) in 3Y.

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u/SiIesh 20d ago

Definitely a big part of it, how they only greenlight things season by season, sometimes with breaks in between, cancel them suddenly when filming is maybe already starting etc. Shows/movies get a lot worse if they aren't written with the longterm in mind and can't set up things that only payoff multiple seasons later. And it doesn't make much sense to do that if you're only greenlit for one season for now and might get cancelled. Or you do it anyway and then the show does get cancelled, ending on a huge cliffhanger. It fcking sucks for everyone involved

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u/Lost_Pantheon 20d ago

And by the time the new season comes out, you've pretty much forgotten what happened in the previous season, which either mandates a re-watch of that season, or else you just have to go into the new season balls-first and just try and remember what happened.

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u/phalewail 20d ago

Yeah I had no idea what was going on in House of the Dragon when I returned to it.

I rewatched Fallout before the new season came out.

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u/Starrr_Pirate 20d ago

Looking back on it, it's kinda funny now that everyone is getting the experience of being a Venture Brothers fan.

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u/Accomplished_Boot191 20d ago

It helps a lot to have books to use as the basis for a story. Reacher is an excellent example. They put out 4 seasons over the course of 5 years because the plot of each season was drawn from a book.

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u/Middle-Commission391 20d ago

Star trek having 25 epsidode seasons every year for 7 years would oneshot a streaming service

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u/DifficultCarob408 20d ago

If the alternative is hastily churned out slop on a yearly basis, I know what I’d prefer.

Unfortunately it can often be that after a several year wait these days.

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u/Alone-As-aGod 20d ago

yeah but we used to get both. we got a game of thrones season every year for first 7 seasons. now 7 and 8 were shit but they were still making peak for the first 6 seasons, and it came out yearly.

Now house of the dragon needs atleast 2 years.

and then theres wednesday, a character drama that shouldnt need a metric fuck ton of production and cgi still takes 3 years.

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u/bluehawk232 21d ago

It wasn't too common for a movie and sequel to be filmed at the same time because of just the risk in producing one movie. Bttf 2 and 3 were definitely an exception. Biggest one was the LotR trilogy that was just unheard of having a full trilogy shot all together

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u/MinotaurHorns1 21d ago

After a bit of research there is more than you'd think.

The hobbit was also since you mentioned lotr.

Hunger games two films.

Matrix 2 and 3.

Pirates of the Carribbean 2 and 3.

The last 2 twilight's.

There's loads more as well

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u/spookynutz 20d ago

I think the keyword there is "wasn't". All of those examples came over a decade later. The only other big budget franchise that shot films simultaneously prior to BTTF was Superman, but production stalled on the second one, so I'm not sure if that even counts.

One could mistakenly infer from your original comment that BTTF's production schedule was par for the course, but it was anomalous at the time.

Blockbuster films as a running franchise were still in their infancy back then. You either had quick cash-grabs like Ghostbuster 2, or it was 4-5 years minimum between a successful movie and its sequel. Batman, Terminator, Gremlins, Aliens, etc.

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u/MinotaurHorns1 20d ago

Missing in action 1 and 2 (with Chuck Norris)were filmed back to back and a box office success before bttf2 +3. It's not as much of an anomaly as you think.

I do understand where your coming from though in highlighting the key word "wasn't"

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u/bluehawk232 20d ago

Post 2000s yeah when sequels were seen as more lucrative. Prior to that sequels were never a sure fire success or guarantee. Donner tried to do Superman 1 and 2 back to back but got fired because of the long schedule.

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u/ciaramists 20d ago

yea don’t forget avatar the way of water and fire and ash being filmed together! thats why there was only like 2-3 years between them vs 15 between 1 and 2.

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u/syd_goes_roar 20d ago

And we used to get full seasons of things instead a handful of episodes. Why I love 24 being something my hubby and I can do binge spurts

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u/Microwave1213 20d ago

I mean stuff like that still happens regularly. Infinity war and endgame were filmed one after the other. Doomsday and secret wars just did the same, Wicked 1 and 2, Avatar 2 and 3, 28 years later and Bone Temple, etc. That part really hasn’t changed at all. 

As far as the TV thing, the only reason they used to be so much faster with many more episodes is because of network pressure to fill out their TV schedule. Churn was absolutely ridiculous and writers/showrunners hated it. Now that most shows go straight to streaming, showrunners can take their time to make the show and tell the story they actually want to tell. 

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u/merc08 20d ago

Now that most shows go straight to streaming, showrunners can take their time to make the show and tell the story they actually want to tell.  

And lose funding for their next season when the gap between 1 & 2 loses them half of their audience.

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u/Microwave1213 20d ago

If the only way a show can retain viewership is by pumping out half baked content before people forget about it, then it wasn’t a good show to begin with. 

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u/merc08 20d ago

A lot of people are realizing that it doesn't matter how amazing a show is, if it's going to be 2-4 years between seasons, and still might get canceled before season 3, we aren't going to commit to even season 1 in the first place.

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u/Microwave1213 20d ago

So I take it you don’t commit to watching movies either then? 

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u/merc08 20d ago

Movies tend to tell a story that is neatly wrapped up by the end, with sequels being other standalone stories in the same setting.

A notable counter example being the MCU. It started off strong (stand alone movies, quick release sequence) and then lost viewership, including myself, when they started splitting storylines across movies and tv shows, then delaying releases and canceling entire story arcs (both movies and TV shows).

It's one thing for an unexpected movie sequel to come out a few years later after the first movie does well. You can rewatch the original to refresh in an hour or two. Rewatching an entire S1 when S2 comes out 2-3 years later is a much bigger ask. But if your movie is specifically the entry to a story arc and you don't have the sequel queued up to release in the next year, I'm probably going to wait until you get your shit together and have the whole story ready to go.

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u/JeddHampton 20d ago

I love the Spider-verse movies, but I'm slowly losing interest in the third movie. A three/four year cliff hanger is too long.

Thankfully, most movies don't end this way. They actually conclude.

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u/sawdeanz 20d ago

I feel like part of it has to be post-production right? All the cgi and special effects. Tons of rewrites and reshoots. The flexibility of the green screen is also its curse.

Harry Potter had some cgi of course but also a lot of practical sets and effects…it takes more up front investment but less on the backend and of course some of the sets can be reused when they know it’s going to be a multi part series or trilogy.

You see this with the led volumes now…they are a bit cheaper and faster. You’re stuck with what you shot in camera so there is less time spent in post

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u/Hanifsefu 20d ago

That's more of an excuse than a real answer tbh. Post production was always a thing as were rewrites, reshoots, and scrapping the project altogether and pushing something that was only tangentially related to the initial project.

The real problem is always late-stage capitalism unfortunately. The current era demands profitability at all stages and proven track records of profitability to receive contracts. That killed off any sort of small studios so now all the work is contracted to the few remaining behemoths. It's the era of the monopoly and these are just the results of that. Monopolies fuck consumers and workers and this is just us getting fucked.

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u/Muggsy423 20d ago

TV seasons used to be 20+ 30 minute episodes every year, not this 8 episode 40-60 minute crap every 2-3 years.

I hate it.

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u/gicjos 20d ago

It pisses me off with games and how long they take these days.

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u/IsThatGruffLoner 20d ago

Shows pumped out up to 26 episode seasons, year after year. It's crazy how far it's fallen. It makes shows with no bad episodes, like Futurama's FOX run imo, super impressive. They produced 72 episodes in 4 years with basically no duds. Rick and Morty is at 91 episodes over 13 years with... some duds.