This is going to disappoint a lot of folks (myself included). Warner Bros has apparently decided to change the release of the film version of Half-Blood Prince to Summer 2009 (instead of Thanksgiving of this year).
“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.”
Alright, patrons – let’s show ‘em how rowdy we can get here in The Hog’s Head. Bar fight time.
HT to HP Progs
revgeorge on 
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It is disappointing. I can’t believe it.
That’s insane. I can understand pushing it back a month or two (although I wouldn’t like that either…), but almost 8 months? And announcing it just after they put out the international release dates is just bad form.
It comes out the day before Azkatraz. That should be interesting
It comes out the day before Azkatraz. That should be interesting
Yes. The one silver lining. Going to opening night with literally hundreds of Potter fans in San Francisco is going to be a lot of fun.
In fact, Azkatraz is already all over this. From the Azkatraz Facebook Group:
So, I was right to keep voting for “filled with trepidation” on the poll! I just didn’t realize what I was trepidatious about.
It’s not some August 14th Day’s joke, right?
Sadly, this evil story appears to be true. There’s an open weekend in the summer schedule & so based on past success WB is moving the movie there. Can’t say I blame them, since their job is to make money & they know the Harry Potter fanatics will see the movie no matter how much they screw us over. Of course, that being said, doesn’t mean I don’t want to see the WB execs lined up against the wall & …
I guess Paramount (?) did the same thing with the new Star Trek movie, moving it to an open date in May 2009.
revgeorge, and I was right to vote for “Whatever, bring on the movie.” Because they’re not, are they?
This is going to be a real blow to my 7 year old Scorp whose birthday celebration was going to be take four of his friends to the movie and then go out for pizza and cake.
Not to be paranoid, or anything, do we know for sure that the “tent-pole” release is the real reason why the release is being delayed? Are there rumblings of other reasons? Such as that Gambon’s deficiencies require major re-shoots? Or plot tinkerings so his role is reduced?
Travis,
Do you have your HP presentations prepared and ready for the Azkatraz 2009 “call for papers” yet, in light of all this news!!
Wow! A Harry Potter conference and the world premiere of HBP all in the same venue! Yea, it’s a little tough to think of the wait after being mentally prepared for the November release, but this is great news for the conference next July.
I’ll bet the HPEF staff working on the Azkatraz 2009 event are all hooting and doin’ “high-fives” right now.
WHAAAAAAATTTTT! This is so annoying. I understand that they need to work on the film but it’s really infuriating. Geesh!
David, given the theme of Azkatraz, yes, I’m fairly certain I know what I’ll be proposing for Azkatraz! I’m looking forward to this one, a lot.
Oh, Red Rocker, if only it would be true! That they would replace Gambon or rework his scenes. But I doubt that very much, mores the pity.
From reading Warner Brothers’ statements, it seems like _absolutely everything_ is done on the film. They just want to wait for this opening in the summer market.
Very disappointing. I did a double take when I was checking out Box Office Mojo and saw this change. I understand that WB wants to make money and especially given OOTP’s success last year (made around $292 million), it makes sense to move HBP to next July. However, Warner Bros. cannot attribute OOTP’s success to being a summer release only, not when July 21, 2007 was looming in the shadows. That said, a summer Harry Potter release doesn’t always work. POA was released June 2004 and made the lowest of the Potter films thus far ($249.5 million). Will this release change affect the release dates for the two film installments of Deathly Hallows? I wonder.
Conspiracy Theory 1: The Dark Knight has pushed the credibility cache for fun summer flicks to the stratosphere and WB doesn’t want one cash cow to compete with the other for awards.
Conspiracy Theory 2: They want to push Half-Blood Prince back to closer proximity with the DH, volume 1. WB has already made a ton of money this year; two HP movies in one year would provide a big boost next year.
Conspiracy Theory 3: I have no idea if Yates has put together a first cut of HBP, yet. But perhaps some studio execs were unhappy with some footage…?
Number 1 is actually good — it means HBP is a good film that WB thinks might compete for some serious awards.
Number 2 is simply the money principle at work, as it always is with HP.
And of course, Number 3 is the worst-case scenario — unless they’ve caught on to the fact that Gambon sucks.
Anyone else want to take a stab at totally unjustified guesses?
Dave, you make sense. Having HBP next year would bring it closer to the planned Fall 2010 release of Deathly Hallows and perhaps Warner Bros. does not want HBP to compete this year with its top moneymaker Dark Knight, which is breaking all sorts of records and will definitely top $500 million and perhaps more. The late release of the trailer could indicate that Yates is still cutting the final product. Also let me add another unjustified guess:
Conspiracy Theory 4: The filmmakers want the actors to have more of a break before the gruelling task of filming Deathly Hallows. Pushing HBP to July 2009 will achieve this. They simply can do other things without making appearances and more during a regular film release, which they would’ve had to do this November.
Talk about a totally unjustified guess, lol.
Dave, Johnny,
You both hit the strongest reason for this move in my opinion.
WB does not want HBP to have to compete against Dark Knight at the box office this autumn. This would be in order to keep the WB/HP box office sales figures strong through all seven movies.
It also gives WB a big foothold for the summer box office next year.
Let’s face it, the way it looks right now Dark Knight is showing little signs of slowing at the box office right through the end of the year at this rate.
Reason #4 is also right on. Dan Radcliffe is moving right into Equus rehearsals at this time, as well some of the other actors being on other projects. They definitely could use the break from running back and forth across the country and England to do the Premieres, Network talk show circuit, etc. in the midst of all the extra work they are all doing between HP filming.
Next summer just made more sense.
Radcliffe already looks about 25 years old. By the time he rids the world of Voldemort, he’ll be using a walker
Red Rocker, I found myself wondering the same thing — is this all about money? (Not that it would be surprising…) Or is there some artistic tinkering going on, especially around Gambon’s scenes? Although how on earth they would reduce Dumbledore’s role in this film is beyond me…
Unfortunately, BB seems to have knocked herself out in frustration. Kept shouting “Warner Brothers!” followed by some rather unfortunate choice of words and the next thing I know, she’s picked up a frying pan while shouting “who cares if Dan Radcliffe is on Broadway with a Horse!” and then apparently inadvertently knocked herself out.
The Cat
Let me just put it this way . . .
I woke up, got a nice cup of coffee, fed the cat, started psyching myself up for a day teaching high-schoolers, checked my blackberry for messages, clicked on the HBP message sent by Leaky, read it, put down blackberry, thought about it being April 1st, then realized it was August 15th, pretended I didn’t see said message, didn’t talk about it till that night after Mass where a friend pointed out the irony of the 2nd reading–last enemy to be destryed is death– and this disappointing announcement, still too mad, so changed subject to Twilight, drank a few glasses of Pinot Grigio, still so mad I can’t think about it, Breaking Dawn?