Saturday, August 16, 2008

Harry Potter Delayed is Harry Potter Denied

What posseses the dominant entertainment conglomerate in the world to take a huge-budgeted movie in one of the highest-grossing franchises in history, set to open in three months, and push its opening back to July 17, 2009 -- a change tantamount to, say, pushing the Normandy invasion back to 1945?

Two things. One, a phemonemon called "The Dark Knight." The other, a summer bereft of the sort of "tent pole" movies that made a lot of executives rich this summer.

Hence, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" -- by all accounts, the sort of dark fantasy that would benefit from the gloom of November -- will debut around the same time that "Dark Knight" debuted this year.

No word yet on how this will be harmonized with the planned releases of parts I and II of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the last two films in the series. (At least until the computer-generated animated prequel. Kidding.)

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