House of Cards Season 2 Release News, Netflix Hopes to Make Series as Popular as Harry Potter Movies

"House of Cards" the original series on Netflix became a surprise smash hit in its first season and the highly anticipated Season 2 is in the works right now. They were tweeting while holding open casting calls in Baltimore, Maryland in May. 

Chief executive producer of Netflix, Reed Hastings, is enjoying the success of the "House of Cards" but has even bigger long term aspirations for the political thriller series. 

"Hopefully, by the time we get to season three, four, five, if we're fortunate enough to get there, then we turn it into a Harry Potter-esque global massive phenomena," said Hastings. He is referring to the anticipation that each new Harry Potter book and movie received from the famous author J.K. Rowling, they hope each new season of "House of Cards" can have that same kind of anticipation. 

Those are high hopes, as the success of the Harry Potter series is extremely hard to come by. The Harry Potter franchise has made over $7 billion at the box office globally. Netflix just passed the $1 billion revenue quarterly, but that is for everything on the website not just "House of Cards". 

"House of Cards" is Netflix's first original series and received some nice validation with it's recent Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Drama Series". This was the first time a program from only a digital platform received a high-profile Emmy nomination. 

Jennifer Holt, an associate professor of film and media studies at the University of California Santa Barbara had this to say about Netflix, "The more critical acclaim its programming gets, the more valuable it will become as a service, and the more people will be willing to pay for it."

"House of Cards" Season 2 is expected to release early in 2014 on Netflix. 

To read more about "House of Cards" check out their official website HERE.