The Los Angeles Times is reporting about the fan reaction to the news that the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie will be delayed by eight months. They interviewed WB President and Chief Operating Officer, David Horn about the situation and he elaborated on the press release from yesterday. He quashed rumors that the delay is due to production difficulties:
“There is no production delay or production consideration. . . . It feels like we have an opportunity in the summer,” Horn said.
He added that he had seen the film, which is in the final production stages, and that it would “absolutely have been ready” by November. He characterized the shift as a proactive business move, not a retreat. “The question we asked is, what is best for this movie.”
He then continued to explain the following:
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.
Horn finished the interview by letting everyone know that “We would never do anything to hurt one of the movies or the series. We love our fans.” And money.
Alan Horn, President and Chief Operating Officer of Warner Brothers said this about the move:
“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.”
We will get you more info as it comes in. This is big news that will sure to disappoint many Potter fans.
UPDATE: One good thing to come out of this: I received this email from the HPEF, the minds behind Harry Potter conventions such as Prophecy, Portus and the upcoming, Azkatraz 2009:
We are in touch with movie theaters within walking distance of the Parc55, the official Azkatraz hotel, and we will definitely be having HBP viewing parties from Friday on.
The IMAX near the hotel - it’s about 3 or 4 blocks away - will not know if they will have the film in IMAX or on regular-sized screens until February or March, but we have reserved an entire theater for the showing at 00:00:01 on July 17, 2009! We are also working to schedule at least one additional showing over the weekend, and perhaps one on Tuesday as well, depending on attendee interest.
Tickets will be available when our registration system goes live in the beginning of next month, and we will have more info about cosplaying, music, and other movie-showing events at Azkatraz shortly.
Be sure to keep checking our website (http://www.hp2009.org) for all the latest updates!!
Hopefully by now, you’ve seen the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. We sat down immediately after watching to record out thoughts. What do you think of the trailer? Does the voice of the woman in the orphanage belong to J.K. Rowling?
We’ve all been anticipating the 9pm EST release of the official Half Blood Prince teaser trailer; but we can now see it an early released copy on MSN movies. It looks fantastic (although if one didn’t know better they might think that Tom Riddle was the main character in the story)!
Yesterday it was announced that that the worldwide debut of the trailer for the sixth film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, would take place via satellite on Tuesday, July 29th, from 9:00 - 9:15pm EST.
However, today we got a tip from the Spanish HP site, BlogHogwarts.com that the satellite feed of the trailer will be available on aol.com. Here is the report:
I inform you that we contacted Warner Bros. Mexico today, and they
have confirmed to us that the teaser trailer of the upcoming movie
‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ will be exclusively aired in
the AOL website for the USA, next Tuesday 29th. It’s not confirmed yet
if the AOL websites for other countries will have the trailer also,
but they say that this is the first time that a website is going to
set up his satellite signal to transmit the trailer directly =
We will keep you posted with any further developments.
The first official Half Blood Prince Teaser is now being shown at Imax viewings of the Dark Knight movie. BlogHogwarts.com put it up on youtube and you can see it here:
We showed this teaser trailer (which may or may not…ok, may not, be the teaser trailer for the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie) at our panel at the Portus Podcast Palooza (which was awesome, thank you so much for everyone who came to our panel).
This appeared in a survey I took from Borders Books. It seems that it might be some kind of Half Blood Prince Promotional poster which will grace the cover of the book once the movie comes out. What are your thoughts?
What do you think? Could this be the new Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie poster? (Hat tip to Bill)
It is official, the LA Times has reported that WB will be making the announcement tomorrow that Deathly Hallows will be split into two movies with David Yates directing them. Here is what the article says:
WATFORD, England — It’s official: Eight will be the magic number for the “Harry Potter” film franchise.
After months of rumors, Warner Bros. and the producers of the massively successful movies will announce Thursday that they plan to split “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” J.K. Rowling’s seventh and final “Potter” novel, into two blockbuster films — one to be released in November 2010 and the second in May 2011.
The films will be titled, simply, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II,” according to producer David Heyman. Director David Yates, who returned for his second tour of Potter duty with “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and is quite popular with the cast, will direct both “Deathly Hallows” films, which will be filmed concurrently. Screenwriter Steve Kloves also returns and, by completion of the franchise, will have written seven of the eight films.
This announcement will bring a flurry of opinions and emotions from hard core Harry Potter fans. I personally think it is a great idea and am hopeful that this means that they will stay as close to the original story line as possible. Plus, this means that there will be continued excitement until at least May 2011 for all of us Potter fans! (hat tip to Nathalie for pointing us to this!)
So…we preordered a copy of the Order of the Phoenix DVD, but it didn’t arrive yet…so, we borrowed a copy so that we could watch the extra features and review them for the podcast but…there were no extras on the copy we borrowed….so instead we just watch a few scenes and offer our comments. Hope you like it.
Mark you calendars: the first ever HPProgs call-in show is set to kick off at 11PM EST this Saturday, December 15. Call in and talk to us about whatever you like! It’s going to be awesome. In case you’re too shy (or chicken) to verbally engage us, we’re pretty sure you can listen live. The call in number is 646.595.4635, check out the call-in page for more details.
We’re just back from Prophecy 2007. In short, we had a great time, came home and immediately sat down to recap . Between the amazing sessions, the vast array of Potter fans and the great discussions, it was a weekend to remember. Penny recapped day one and day two in two previous posts, with some great links to many of the amazing speakers we got to hear. Make sure to check them out, as well tune in to this episode to hear our thoughts.
No news for this episode, we’ll be back with a regular episode later this week.
Last night, at 12:01 AM, we saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at Baltimore’s historic Senator Theatre. Beforehand, we took our video camera and interviewed some of the faithful waiting in line for the movie. In this episode, we recount the whole experience, from the theories to the costumes, along with our review and discussion of the OotP movie.
