Warner Bros. Delays Release of New Potter Film

BURBANK, August 15: Warner
Bros. Pictures has moved the release date of the highly anticipated sixth
installment in the Harry Potter
franchise from this November to summer 2009, partly in response to the 100-day
Hollywood writers’ strike.

Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince will now open
day-and-date in the U.S. and in major international markets on July 17, 2009.
Announcing the move—which leaves the studio without a holiday season
tent-pole—Alan Horn, the president and COO of Warner Bros., noted: “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.”

Jeff Robinov, the
president of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, noted that the two-part Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows
will not be affected by this change. “We know Harry Potter fans are eagerly anticipating seeing the final
chapters unfold onscreen. In fact, the good news for them is that the gap will
now be shortened between Half-Blood Prince and the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

—By Mansha Daswani