You may have checked the date already after reading the headline, but no, it is not April the 1st.Warner Brothers has just announced that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will not be released until next summer, on July 17th.
Mr. Alan Horn, President of WB, stated:
"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."
He also said:
"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. since its July 18 release, making it the second-highest grossing 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 opposite 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."
Mr. Horn finally said: "We would never do anything to hurt one of the movies or the series. We love our fans."
1 comment:
Nooooooo!! I really don't like this. Well, maybe it would be better in the summer, but still, I can't wait :)
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