The Official MovieSet Blog
Harry Potter vacates the holidays, leaving the vampires of “Twilight” an opening
Monday, August 18, 2008
The sixth film in Warner Bros. epic Harry Potter film series has been pushed back eight months. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had originally been scheduled for release on November 21, a juicy position for the holiday box office season. But Warners has decided to change its plans, leaving the date open for some other film to snatch.
With Harry Potter 6 repositioned to open next July, that left the door wide open for Twilight to come and take it. Summit Entertainment’s adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s young adult novel has been called the next Harry Potter, and certainly the fans of Twilight have been looking forward to seeing their heroes come to life on the silver screen. The film had been slated to open in early December, well away from Half-Blood Prince, but has now moved up its release and taken over the 11/21 date.
So why did Warners move the next Harry Potter film to next summer? The studio insists that it didn’t need the time to finish the production and explains that it merely wanted to beef up its schedule for next summer. Still, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will now face much more competition when it comes out next July while Twilight could stand to benefit tremendously from the Potter fans that had been hoping to see their tween fantasy before Christmas. Let me go out on a limb here but I’d daresay that Twilight could have just easily added another $40 million dollars to its gross just from this move.
Posted at 5:09PM by admin
