'Philosopher's Stone' to air in Russia
July 31, 2003 at 11:04 AM ET
grae
iharrypotter.net (via The Moscow Times)
If you're a Harry Potter fan and live in Russia, now you've got a chance to watch your favorite boy wizard on the telly. According to The Moscow Times, three Russian networks have acquired the rights to air several Warner Bros movies
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NTV, Rossia and CTC will take turns airing "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," "Lord of the Rings," "Ocean's 11," "Blade 2" and scores of other movies and television series when the new season kicks off in the fall.Officially, the networks declined to reveal how much they paid for the rights, or how to sum was divided, but employees of all three networks put the figure at around $12 million. [Arkady] Tsimbler [NTV's director for movie programming], however, suggested that this figure was too low.
The price Russian networks pay for movie rights has risen dramatically over the last few years.