Confundo!

Jill Pantozzi | August 15th, 2008

Friday’s are supposed to be fun and relaxing. Instead I woke up to annoying and stupid. Warner Brothers has pushed back the release date of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from November 21 of this year to July 17, 2009. What do you think, Bat-Bogey Hex’s all around at the WB?

Harry says, “Noooooo! Keep the release in November!!”

HPANA has been updating all day with new information. Here is the official statement from Warner Brothers President and COO Alan Horn:

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.

Translated, all that comes down to is, “We think we can make more money if we release it in the summer.” Lame. Even worse is when you add in this comment Horn gave to the Associated Press after the official statement:

The picture is completely, absolutely, 100 percent on schedule, on time. There were no delays. I’ve seen the movie. It is fabulous. We would have been perfectly able to have it out in November.

Fans are obviously outraged, including myself. If you’re so inclined there are three petitions to be signed in protest:

Doubtful if it will do any good but it’s worth a try at least. It’s just frustrating to know there’s a finished film sitting on a shelf somewhere and we have to wait an extra seven months to see it. If the film leaks on the internet beforehand they have no one to blame but themselves. 

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4 Responses to “Confundo!”

  1. The Nerdy Bird says:
    August 18, 2008 at 6:43 pm

    I just don’t understand why they made this move now. I can’t see anything specific that really made them realize just now that they’d make more money in the summer. I mean, isn’t that obvious from the get-go? I was wondering if maybe it also had something to do with Daniel Radcliffe doing another run of Equus in the fall. Maybe they thought he’d be too busy to go out and promote the movie at the same time?

  2. GeekBoy says:
    August 18, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    Wow, that is extremely lame.

    And you’re right, when it leaks to the web — WHICH IT WILL — and when that takes all the steam out of its big summer release, they’ll have nobody to blame but themselves.

    Because at this point, I bet a lot of frustrated fans will watch the pirated version, then wait to see the screen version a few weeks after it releases (to rob them of opening weekend numbers).

    Seriously, WTF? Are we looking forward to a future now where all action movies release in July? Is July going to become what Thursdays nights are in the TV world?

  3. Hex says:
    August 16, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Now that it’s a movie franchise that’s not running parallel to a book craze, there’s gonna be a lot more things like this happening, I fear.

  4. Randy says:
    August 16, 2008 at 4:13 am

    Just goes to show…Harry Potter might be good enough to fend off the evil Voldemort, but none of his magicks are strong enough to withstand the dreaded Suits and Ties in charge of the movie studio!!