Nearly every big Hollywood hit spawns imitators, hoping to ride the coat tails of a huge success. However when it comes to literary adaptations this is doubly true. Because when a piece of literature is adapted into a financially successful film the studios simply have to look in the same section of a bookstore to see ready made stories for their chance to cash in. That's why we'll probably see every story ever done by Stephen King or Michael Crichton eventually put to screen. One or two of their works become hit films and the studios hope to duplicate that by going back to the same well. So when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone became one of the huge hits of 2001 and had six book sequels either already written or on the way the studios realized they could do more than just cash in. They started snatching up the rights to any and every fantasy themed "young adult" book series hoping to not only get a hit but a new franchise.

It seemed like the perfect plan. Not only would there be a built in audience of each of the properties but also built in sequels. If there's one thing Hollywood likes more than a hit movie it's a hit franchise. Profitable franchises where profitable sequels can be cranked out at regular intervals are the most sought after properties in the business. Yet there's something a little odd this situation. Generally Hollywood is just as quick to jump ship as it is to get on the bandwagon. With only one exception every single non-Harry Potter would be franchise has either flat out tanked or hasn't made enough return to warrant a sequel. The list of franchise non-starters is daunting: Seeker, Eragon, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Ember, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and The Golden Compass. All came and went. It would be easy enough to disregard except that these are all fantasy films. Fantasy films by their very nature are expensive, they are special effects heavy and set building intensive to say nothing of whatever money goes to the token respectible name actor. They're not just failures, they're pricey failures. And yet there's still more on the way. Twilight comes out later this month (it's release inspired this column entry), Inkheart will be dumped later this year and Cirque du Freak is in production.

So what makes Harry Potter different? Why does he continue to triumph while each and every pretender to the throne has fallen?  Well for one thing the Harry Potter book series has a much higher level of not only recognition but cross-over appeal.  Harry Potter is not just a series bought by adults so their kids will read.  There are many fans of the series who are either adults or people who were younger when the series started and have grown up in addition to all the young readers discovering the series for the first time.  You would be very hard pressed to find this lever of cross-over appeal for any of the other series that have been made.  So while Harry Potter pulls in not only kids and families but adult fans and people who are just curious to see what the fuss is all about the other series fail to pull in any more than those who are fans of the book.  This is true of most literary adaptations, while the fan base may come out to see the movie version it has to be appealing to people who have never read or heard of the book in the first place.  There has not been much effort on the part of the studios to market most of these films beyond just appealing to the existing fans.

There has been only one series to break this trend and that is the Chronicles of Narnia.  However there are a few things it has over the other series that I've mentioned.  The first is simply by virtue of how long the books have been around there is a much larger pool of readers to pull from.  There's also the benefit of name recognition.  But even this venerable series can't seem to keep up with Harry Potter.  The second film entry had a higher budget and brought in lower returns.  While the third film is already in production it may well be the last of the books to make it to theaters unless it sees a significant increase in gross over Prince Caspian.  One thing that may be working against Narnia is that everybody knows the first book, but surprisingly few people even realize that there were more books after that one, much less actually read them.  Nearly everything that is truly iconic about this series is contained in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. 

Harry Potter manages to create a unique world that is appealing in and of itself.  The issue with so many of these series is how generic they are.  Most series made for "young adults" are absolutely riddled with genre cliches.  The reason they get away with it is that the people who are reading them aren't yet well read enough to recognize how cliched the ideas are.  A fantasy journey of a young "chosen one" character is original to somebody reading it for the first time.  But movie audiences grew tired of these tales a very long time ago.  So for those not fans of the books the trailers reveal most of these stories to be the generic cliche ridden stories that young readers fail to recognize them as.  And that is exactly why Twilight is going to underperform.

The expectations for Twilight have been raised to a level that simply astonishes me.  It's being touted as the new Harry Potter in terms of what people expect its impact and gross to be.  There will be many people who are going to be very let down when the ticket returns come in.  I'm not saying the film with outright tank but it will not be the phenomenon that is being predicted and whatever success it has will dwindle with each sequel (if it makes enough to warrant them).  Now I'm speaking as somebody who has not read the books, but as a relatively young horror and fantasy genre fan I fall into the demographic that this film needs to appeal to in order to be the hit it hopes to be.  And there is nothing that I have seen in any trailer or promotional material that is an even slightly original take on vampires.  It's the same crap we've been seeing since the 90's.  Vampire human love story... whoopee freaking doo.

Between cliche riddled stories and studios expecting a built in audience to do the marketing for them I honestly can't see any other film series recreating what Harry Potter has accomplished.  It has become a truly unique series, not only spawning possibly the most successful theatrically released sequels of any series but giving the audience the unique experience of watching the actors mature with the characters.  This sort of growing up with the character is usually something that would only be found on television series, Full House and the Olsen Twins being the classic example.  After the very long string of total failures and half-successed one would think Hollywood would stop trying to recreate the lightning in a bottle that is Harry Potter.  But each time a new film in that series comes out and does huge business the studios start seeing dollar signs and start snatching up movie rights again.  I expect the trend will back off a few years after the final Harry Potter film when the studios will finally realize there is nothing that will truly fill the void left by that series.