Respect Authority

There may not be a Harry Potter film in theaters this holiday season for all you muggles to spend your Christmas money on; nevertheless, the series inches ever closer to its conclusion which, by the time it’s finally released, will probably be completely underwhelming.

We’ve already had Vampire Harry Potter see the light of day (heh, sorry guys), I’m sure Harry Potter in Space and perhaps even a Swashbuckling Pirate Potter can’t be that far off. Once the actual, original Harry Potter films come to a close, the very genre it created will have been so sapped of fresh ideas, the director might be reduced to pitting everybody’s favorite whining wizard against 600 CGI Agent Smiths as the final showdown just to surprise people.

With that in mind, I spent some valuable company time today getting paid to think of potential Potter spin-offs once the series is wrapped. It might be a futile effort, considering J.K. Rowling may actually have literally all the money in the world at this point, however, production company execs don’t… yet. I know, that came as a shock to me as well, but as it turns out, they gave it all to Will Smith. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be the only one who thinks that, really, any one of these stands a great chance of getting greenlighted:

• Harry Potter Origins: Severus Snape
• Hagrid Unleashed
• Mudbloodz In The Hood
• Prison Break: Escape From Azkaban
• Dementors Live At Ozzfest
• McGonagall and Dumbledore: Before Hogwarts
• I Know What You Did Last Summer Locked Under The Stairs
• Hermione’s Leaky Cauldron

Okay, despite the fact that I could, literally, do this all day… I should probably stop. These are starting to veer a little porny and I really shouldn’t implicate myself any further… not that there isn’t a gigantic market for Harry Potter pornography, anyway (that link is relatively work safe, by the way… that is, unless you’re employed by the US Department of Homophobia — also known as the entirety of Utah). So who knows, maybe I’ll be able to squeeze a little more blood out of this sorcerer’s stone just yet.

Scary Voldemort taunting Harry Potter in his dreams, or Romantic Voldemort serenading a woman in hers? I think this could go either way.

Want to watch the latest Harry Potter movie at home like, two whole weeks before it comes out on DVD? Go to Korea.

Warner Bros. said Wednesday it plans to become the first Hollywood Studio to make movies available through video-on-demand two weeks before their DVD release in Korea. The goal is to take “full advantage of Korea’s extraordinary digital infrastructure,” and obviously for Warner, to make dolla’ dolla’ bills. (Or I guess in Korea, dolla’ dolla’ won).

Indeed, Korea is pretty super-duper tech savvy. Approximately 94% of households there have broadband connections, and more than 47% of people surveyed say they’ve downloaded a movie from the Internet at least once (no word on the porn-to-non-porn ratio, sadly). They also own nuclear weapons, and have so totally made technology their bitch that the country plans to fund a tech center in South Africa, which is a pointless gesture if I ever saw one.

Here’s my question: If Koreans love movies so much, why do they keep trying to sell theirs to me at the laundromat?