Warner Bros

This past cinematic summer may have been jam-packed with giant transforming robots hitting each other for the third time round, angry apes rising, Pixar's toys coming to life for the third and (presumably) final time and Johnny Depp once again hitting the high seas as Captain Jack Sparrow, but in the end it was undoubtedly the summer of one famous boy wizard. The final instalment in the phenomenally successful Harry Potter franchise raked in over £811 million at the worldwide box office, adding to the pot that makes it the single most successful film series in history.

Chances are, if you're a fan of the series you'll be looking forward to owning the last film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, for yourself. And you can do exactly that on 2 December, when it hits DVD and Blu-Ray.

However, you'll have less than a month to get yourself a copy. It has been revealed that the franchise's studio Warner Brothers plans to pull all of the movies from circulation on 29 December — meaning that after that date, you will not be able to buy any of the HP movies in physical form (digital downloads and on-demand will still be available). This may seem a bizarre idea, but it is not without precedent: the studio is taking a leaf straight out of Disney's book. The latter studio most recently pulled this stunt with The Lion King, which was unavailable on DVD for years, but which recently saw a big-screen re-release — with a home release to follow on 7 November.

The idea is that limiting the availability of the movies will create a more urgent demand, making fans rush out to get their copies ASAP and allowing the studio to re-release the movies at a later date, after people have been starved of them for a while. It may also force parents to buy it for their children at Christmas, rather than waiting for the January sales.

But while it makes sense for a company like Disney, which is a brand in and of itself, Harry Potter is a singular franchise: it's not as if demand for the movies wouldn't be there if Warner kept them on shelves as normal. You can't help but imagine people heading to their local retailer in a few months looking forward to buying one/some/all of the Potter movies and being sorely disappointed when they are nowhere to be seen.

Just how long the Potter drought will last remains to be seen but it's hard to imagine it will be longer than a few months. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if this strategy works as well for Warner Brothers as it has for Disney — or whether it will cause more frustration than anything else.