Here’s how you watch all eight Harry Potter movies and Fantastic Beasts in chronological and release order.<\/b>
\nWant to watch the Harry Potter movies in order in 2021? The Harry Potter films have remained firm favorites since the final movie was released back in 2011 \u2013 that’s because JK Rowling’s books about the boy wizard are evergreen reading for kids, and that the iconography has become a part of the wider pop culture landscape, from theme parks to video games. The Harry Potter movies, meanwhile, remain a mostly faithful and enjoyable way to ingest the story of the series. While they arguably get a little too dark later on, reflected in changes in visual style to remove some of the charm from its setting, the first three in particular form a great arc. While movies one and two are like Spielberg-style kids’ films, the third is moodier but more dramatically satisfying. As a collective, they make for a great binge-watching experience. But how do you watch the Harry Potter movies in order, both chronologically and in the way they were originally released? Below, we’ve got you covered, and we’ll also explain where you can stream the Harry Potter films are the time of writing. Here’s how to watch the Harry Potter movies in chronological order \u2013 not including any movies yet to be released, such as the remaining Fantastic Beasts prequels. (The third instalment of that series, now titled The Secrets of Dumbledore, will be released in April 2022, and set some time in the two decades between 1927 and 1945.) We know that the Fantastic Beasts series will end with a duel between Albus Dumbledore and former BFF-turned-nemesis Gellert Grindelwald in 1945, but everything in between is currently a mystery. Below, we decided to just include everything Harry Potter-related that it’s possible to watch right now \u2013 including the stage play, The Cursed Child. Note that outside the US, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Aside from the occasional flashback, the Hogwarts-set movies in the series follow a simple linear structure \u2013 mostly thanks to Rowling\u2019s decision to use the British school calendar as a framework for her narrative. That means each of the seven books in the Potter series focus on a different school year (running from September to August), starting in 1991, when Harry\u2019s 11 years old. While the movies were made in the \u201900s \u2013 and feature the occasional anachronism such as 21st century mobile phones or music \u2013 it\u2019s probable they follow the same carefully crafted timeline as Rowling\u2019s books. That places the Harry Potter films some 70 years after their Fantastic Beasts counterparts. And Harry Potter\u2019s story does continue into the future \u2013 though not on screen \u2013 thanks to the hit stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The story picks up in 2017, during the epilogue from Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, and features the now grown-up Harry, Hermione, Ron and Draco Malfoy, and their kids. There are no complicated interweaving timelines to deal with if you watch the Potter movies in release date order \u2013 it\u2019s two distinct series, with an (as-yet) incomplete set of prequels following on from the parent franchise. That means there\u2019s no need to introduce any kind of Star Wars-style ‘Machete Order’ (see how to watch the Star Wars movies in order) \u2013 yet \u2013 though if we get some massive revelation in Fantastic Beasts 3,4 and 5, that may change. The third Fantastic Beasts movie, The Secrets of Dumbledore, will apparate into theaters in April 2020. It\u2019s also interesting to note that there are more Harry Potter movies than there are books, with final novel The Deathly Hallows split into two parts (a trick repeated by both the Twilight and The Hunger Games series) because there was so much story to fit in. We\u2019re sure the extra box office didn\u2019t hurt either\u2026 Since September 1, all eight of the Harry Potter movies have been available to stream on HBO Max in the US \u2013 which is hardly surprising, seeing as the Warner Bros-owned streaming platform will consider the hit, Warner-owned franchise as an excellent way to attract new subscribers. The movies were previously available via the Peacock service. You can also rent or buy the series on services like Amazon. In the UK, you can’t currently stream the Harry Potter movies, but you can rent or buy them on Amazon, iTunes and more. The complete Harry Potter series is also available on Blu-Ray. The two Fantastic Beasts movies aren’t currently streaming in the US or the UK. As with the Harry Potter books, opinions on which entries in the series are the best are incredibly varied and subjective. As a result, ranking the Harry Potter movies by their IMDb user scores reveals a remarkable consistency in fan response, with all eight instalments clustered between 7.4 and 8.1 out of 10. The two Fantastic Beasts movies are noticeably the least loved releases spawned from JK Rowling’s Wizarding World, a fact perhaps reflected by the second movie’s near 20% drop at the box office compared to its predecessor (according to figures on Box Office Mojo). The more successful of the two, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, made less money than all-but-one of the Potter movies (Prisoner of Azkaban), but seeing as it had 12 years of inflation on its side, it\u2019s debatable whether it actually outperformed the earlier film.<\/p>\n