Rope of Silicon has found out that the Harry Potter films are coming back – as special extended editions. They first caught wind of it when the latest MPAA ratings bulletin gave a PG to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone [Extended Edition], and they got confirmation from Warner Bros Home Video that ‘all Harry Potter films are being planned to get special upcoming releases!’
So the long-awaited double dip is upon us. It’s actually amazing that Warner Bros has waited so long to make fans come back to the well, but the question is just how extended will these extended editions be? Unlike Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, none of the Harry Potter films were shot with longer cuts in mind; elements excised from the books were usually excised in the script stage. As always, some deleted scenes remain – Chris Columbus added 7 minutes to the TV version of Sorcerer’s Stone, for instance – but it seems unlikely that the new discs will contain radical revisions of the films.
What I’ve been hoping for is a grown-up version of the special features. I quit buying the DVDs after the third one (it just became too apparent that a double dip was down the pike), but those first three discs have very kiddie-oriented features. I would love to see a monstrous doc on the entire Potter phenomenon, commentaries from everybody involved (including a standalone Jo Rowling track) and much, much more.
My guess on when we’ll know: quite soon. I bet that the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone [Extended Edition] gets announced as streeting around the same time as The Half-Blood Prince, and the rest of the new discs trickle out in the lead up to the first part of Deathly Hallows.