Saturday, August 16, 2008

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Bullshit.

Earlier this week, WB Entertainment President & COO Alan Horn announced that they were changing the release date of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from November 21, 2008 to July 17, 2009. He said it's mainly because a lot of other movies had WGA strike-related complications and they needed something like Harry Potter to pick up the slack come blockbuster season.

At the exact same time, Issue #1007/1008 of Entertainment Weekly hit the stands. It was a Fall Movie Preview double issue, and the cover was a picture of Harry Potter's face.

This kinda sucks for the Entertainment Weekly peeps, who pride themselves on having their collective finger consistently on the pulse. Especially because it's a double issue, so it'll be on racks and shelves everywhere for two whole weeks before they can put out another one. But if you ask me, this was no accident. Warner Brothers knew Harry Potter was gonna be the cover story of Entertainment Weekly. I bet they purposely waited to make the announcement so they could still get that fortnight of face time on newsstands.

Tricky, fellas. But not tricky enough.

Incidentally, I kinda preferred the idea of a Harry Potter movie coming out in the fall. Just, aesthetically, it seemed to make more sense. Now we gotta see it in the summer. And wait an extra eight months for the privilege. WB spun this by pointing out that it'll shorten the wait between Half-Blood Prince and the next Harry Potter movie. In other words, we should go fuck ourselves.

Cheers,
Diego

3 comments:

Benjamin M Piety said...

Inside rumor I heard was that because of British Labor Laws, they have not had enough time to finish shooting. they have some shots of story boards in place of actual scenes still.

But, my theory is that Batman made their bank roll this year and next year they need to make something just as big...

Hope life is well.

- Ben

diego said...

Yah, the consensus all over the Internet seems to be the whole Dark Knight thing. But if everyone knows that's what their plan is, I just don't see the point in it. However much money Warner Brothers pulls next year, we're not going to magically forget all this strategic rescheduling and hail them as consistently brilliant moneymakers.

Studio bosses should just be honest. People hear all this bullshit and they get pissed. What if Horn just came out and gave the exact moneygrubbing reasons for the move without the sugarcoating? I think everyone would be much happier.

Do you get notified if I respond to you in my own blog?

Cheers,
Diego

Benjamin M Piety said...

No - but I read your blog once a week or so. So, I'll eventually see this. And yeah - no one is fooled but it's like telling kids their is no santa - everyone knows - but just lets the dumb ones figure it out last.