I had the exact same reaction as you, madscntst - and tinkering IS always a good thing.
Quite honestly from a Web design perspective, it's never really a good idea for an URL to simply display a blank page, so more than likely that's why Warner Brothers now has the various permutations of the URL redirecting to their home page. At first they may have thought that few if any people would be checking out the site so soon, meaning without any actual content there. But I suspect quite a few of us have been - and they would be aware of that because all Web sites have a way of showing how many times they've been accessed and by how many unique visitors, so it would have made perfect sense for them to change the redirect to their home page to give people something to see/do rather than just giving them a blank page.
98 days 11 hours 37 minutes 28 seconds until the day the Depp/Burton Dark Shadows is released(ET)!!