This is definitely an interesting bit of news. Warner Brothers has delayed the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from Thanksgiving this year until July 17th next summer! The November 21st release date this year seemed like the perfect spot and there's no reason that it should've been moved. This might have something to do with the recent overflow of films at Warners. Or this might have to do with Warners' lack of a major summer film for 2009 so they're putting Harry Potter in the coveted Dark Knight slot. A mid-July release has obviously been proven successful and the film has a dark focus on Voldemort as the villain just like the Joker. Smart move? I really don't think so.
I was actually really looking forward to seeing this in November. It's quite unfortunate that we'll now have to wait another entire year, but I guess Warner Brothers is trying to capitalize on that $500 million mid-July date. Last year when Order of the Phoenix came out in July, it just didn't feel the same. Harry Potter has and will always be a November movie. I'm quite let down by this decision, but there's not much we can do besides wait. Here is Warner Brothers' COO Alan Horn's statement on the move: "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."
It's actually a smart move business wise. If HP counted this year along with TDK, they would have a huge drop in revenue for 2009. So in short, great for 08, bad for 09.
U should teach me some day