Decision to Move HBP Made within Past Seven Days
HBP Film
A bit more on the decision to change the release date of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” from November of this year to July 17th, 2009 is now online. The Canadian Press has a new article on the timing of the move and the large feature on the film in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly. The article cites a rep for WB saying the studio had “mulling the date change for three or four weeks,” but “it really didn’t kind of get on the front-burner until sometime within the last seven days,” Dan Fellman, Warner Bros. head of distribution, said Sunday.
Entertainment Weekly’s “deadline must have been earlier than the decision, than when we started to get serious about making the decision,” Fellman said. The online version of the feature which we told you about here and here contains an update about the release date change as well as the following as noted on the magazine’s Hollywood Insider blog: “EW and Warner Bros. share a parent company, but they clearly do not share, you know, important … information.”
The blog goes on to joke that the date change will leave Entertainment Weekly “readers in possession of a ‘Dewey Beats Truman’ collectible.” It also notes that British film magazine Empire features Harry Potter on its current cover, though that issue is not strictly a fall preview, touching on big 2009 releases, as well.”
