Harry Potter Pushed to ‘09. EW Misses the News

Posted by mike

August 15, 2008

Harry and Hermoine have just been informed of the bad news :(

In a newsy double post today (only to make up for the fact we missed out on it yesterday), we’re bringing two things to light. I know, I know, we’re supposed to break news not recap it in a double post. But similar to how Taco Bell has just been reinventing the taco or nachos over and over again, we’re doing the same thing with posting. Trust me, you’ll enjoy.

First up is the saddest news I’ve heard in quite some time. If you haven’t heard me mention it before, I’m a little cuckoo for the Harry Potter series. And, if you haven’t heard by now (and somehow missed it in the title), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been pushed back to July 17, 2009. Previously slated to open November 21st of this year, this is a terrible jump for the worst. With a teaser trailer posted only a few days ago, this is not something anyone was expecting. Upon hearing the news, I called friends and relatives similar to the fashion in which you do for a death. Here’s what Warner Bros. had to say about the shift.

Our reasons for shifting ‘Half-Blood Prince’ to summer are twofold: we know the summer season is an ideal window for a family tent pole release, as proven by the success of our last Harry Potter film, which is the second-highest grossing film in the franchise, behind only the first installment. Additionally, like every other studio, we are still feeling the repercussions of the writers’ strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films–changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of. We agreed the best strategy was to move ‘Half-Blood Prince’ to July, where it perfectly fills the gap for a major tent pole release for mid-summer.

I don’t know what any of that Hollywood gibberish means, but I know it sounds terrible to me. Not so much as in the film is troubled, but more in the sense it’s news I didn’t want to hear. In fact, FirstShowing is reporting that quite a few fans are backlashing out at the studio for this huge jump and is hoping this outcry will be enough to convince Warner Bros. to press “undo” on their release date machine.

On an even weirder twist to this whole story, Entertainment Weekly has put Harry Potter on the cover of their Fall Movie Preview issue. While this isn’t all that weird considering that the issue hits the stands today and the news was released late yesterday, but keep in mind both Warner Bros. and Entertainment Weekly are owned by the same parent company (Time Warner). So apparently, Warner Bros. didn’t think it was big enough news to let one of their sister (brother? I don’t know how the whole company gender thing works) companies know.

IMG: The Bad & Ugly