Apple Increased Price of Harry Potter Movies Following Rickman’s Death

Apple increased the price of their iTunes Harry Potter bundle in the days after Alan Rickman’s death.

In what could be just a terrible coincidence, but certainly isn’t a good look, Apple has raised the price of the Harry Potter Complete Collection over the weekend in the days after Alan Rickman’s passing re-raised the profile of the movie franchise.

Last week the Harry Potter Complete Collection was being priced through iTunes at $49.99. Said collection includes digital versions of the extended editions of all eight movies, with iTunes extras. It was a very good price for the set, which can retail as high as $120. But an eagle eyed shopped noticed that over the weekend that price shot up, to $84.99, where it sits today.

Now, from the looks of thing this probably wasn’t a deliberate jacking up the price of the full set of movies to capitalize on the death of Alan Rickman. Apple is capitalistic, but they’re not Montgomery Burns, tenting their fingers, and releasing the Robotic Richard Simmons on the population. The fact is, that $49.99 price for the full bundle was part of their last minute digital holiday sales, as was noted on Slickdeals forum. With the holiday season over, most deals, even the most generous, expired after the first couple of weeks of January. This is most likely what happened in this case. (I know it feels a lot longer, but really, we’re only just starting the third week of 2016.) The fact that it happened right as Alan Rickman passed both goes to show that it took a lot of people by surprised, and that many marketing departments didn’t think about the fact that the demand for the movies would increase in the wake of this surprise announcement–just as their holiday sale expired.

Next: Another Harry Potter Coloring Book on the way

(But it still is a really terrible look.)