Forums Off Topic
Harry Potter Half Blood Price release date move Fiasco

Ok, so you may or may not have heard that Warner Bros (last week) decided to up and move the release date of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince from this coming November (only 3 months away) to Late July next year!

First off, I'm a potter fan and I enjoyed the books and I've really like that past few films (much more dark and adult material).

Still Warner Bros. First announced this move with a really fake reason why. Warner Bros. Predent and Chief Operating Officer Alan Horn stated the studio’s reasons for moving the film. He said the reasons are twofold: “we know the summer season is an ideal window for a family tent pole release…

we are still feeling the repercusons 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.”

Then all the fan complaints hit the web . . .and man did they complain . ..so much so that Alan Horn responded to the fan base in less than 24 hours of the announcement (never think you're voice can't be heard, this is proof).

I for one knew that first statment was crap and I was right . .. here's the real reason why.

Warner currently is riding high with "The Dark Knight," the Batman film that also stars Bale. The grim super-hero movie has taken in $452 million in the U.S. nce its July 18 release, making it the second-highest grosng film ever.

To some degree, that success motivated Warner to shift "Half-Blood Prince," Horn said. The film will now hit theaters the same midsummer weekend that "Dark Knight" was released this year. Horn said the young, core Potter audience would be out of school and give the film a longer theatrical life. It will now open oppote Universal's special-effects comedy "Land of the Lost," which stars Will Ferrell. But Horn said there was nothing next year compared to this summer's especially dense slate of big-budget releases.

So the movieblog.com Translated that the best, 'Money. Money money money. Take advantage of money. Then Vague reference to writers strike that didn’t affect this film, and money.

So the fans can relax because its just about money. You have it, we want more of it. Money.”

Then as a major insult to fans, Warner Bros starts to release all these images from the movie in hopes to calm the storm . .. and actually the fans didn't buy it and were even further angered at this LOL.

Personally, I was excited to see Half Blood Prince this Fall and I was ticked when I heard they moved it because I knew it was all about the benjamins.

HOWEVER, I completely understand why the studio would do this . .. after all, it is a buness and they want to maximize their profits (as any good buness would do that) and if moving it to a weekend they know the film will do better, I can't really blame them.

Just sucks it's 11 months away.

I just find it funny how the studio lies about it first then comes forward with the truth when they realize that the fan base isn't stupid

as some of you know, i am a masve potter geek. When i first read this i was really upset. I guess my mentality of it is this...how can a Harry Potter film not make serious money?

I can understand it...but they should have just manned up from the beginning and let people know. There was all this hype about how the potter films were gonna go back to the original November release dates and not the summer releases, and they turned around and did it anyway....

take care, Tommy