ABC Family Conjours Half Blood Price Cable Rights

ABC Family continues to secure a basic-cable lock on the Harry Potter franchise by prebuying cable rights to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince 10 months in advance of its theatrical debut, and making a belated pickup of the 2007 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The first four Potter movies – Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire – are already under contract to ABC Family. Tom Zappala, senior VP of program acquisitions and scheduling for ABC Family, said the movies have become one of the standards of the network’s annual 25 Days of Christmas programming, often getting key primetime slots.

The network has bought exclusive rights to Happy Feet and Nancy Drew, and second plays in the network window of Fred Claus, whose first play is on TBS, and TMNT, which kicks off on Cartoon Network. ABC Family also has the right to play off some runs of these titles on the ABC broadcast network, the Disney Channel and Disney XD, all siblings of ABC Family. These runs on all the networks will also apply to the library product that comes along with the deal, including Polar Express, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Miss Congeniality and the first four titles in the Batman series that Warners produced and distributed between 1989 and 1997.