Yep I’m pissed off … extremely pissed off. With Warner Brothers. I’m sure by now that everyone knows that the release of ‘Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince’ has been put back by eight, count ‘em, EIGHT months due to Warner Brothers money grabbing attitude.
Now I know I’m not alone in being upset. The Leaky Cauldron crashed from the number of people trying to access the site and comment on their disgust of the situation – over 600 comments in 2 hours, and reports in various world newspapers about petitions and boycotts from what are described by the LA Times as "amongst the most intense devotees in contemporary pop culture" show that the fans are very angry indeed.
This isn’t helped when WB executives release statements which give away their true intentions. Blaming the recent writers strike is useful but doesn’t cover up the fact they’re hoping to make more money by waiting till next July, especially when IMAX produce a press release saying exactly that. After the understandable outrage from the HP fandom at the date change WB’s President Alan Horn was quoted as saying that he acknowledged that the studio would have to pacify fans in the months to come: “We would never do anything to hurt one of the movies or the series. We love our fans.” Mr Horn certainly doesn’t use my definition of the word love!
The first pacifiers came quickly. After months of nothing much in the way of promotional material suddenly there were new pictures: including Snape, Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange performing the unbreakable vow; Snape and McGonagall with the golden trio examining the charmed necklace and the Slug Club meeting and Christmas party.
Nice to see especially for a Snape fangirl like me (maybe Snape will get more than ten minutes of playing time in this movie after all – a must surely considering the book (and film) is really called Harry Potter and Severus Snape), but annoying too. Forget the pictures and just give us the film!
I guess that explains why the official trailer wasn’t released with ‘The Mummy’ as had been touted by WB at the end of last month, however the publicity machine has already been gearing up for the November release so it will be interesting to see what happens when they have to promote next July. Entertainment Weekly (a huge magazine in the States) is running their 7 page feature on the film this month (it hits the newsstands today) and I am sure there will be others. Hard to see how this missed publicity will be recaptured when the film finally comes out.
So now I have to wait until 17th July 2009 to see the film. WB have helpfully pointed out that this means less of a wait for film 7 – ‘The Deathly Hallows Part 1’ which is due out on 19 November 2010 (assuming of course they don’t shift that date to a more profitable one too), but that doesn’t help. I expected the wait for the next film. I didn’t expect to have to wait another eight months for this one.
Interestingly, as part of the EW article, Steve Kloves (writer of 5 of the 6 HP scripts so far) says that he has just finished the first draft of HP7 Pt1. He is quoted as saying that they (I assume he means WB) are worried that with the end of the book series that the popularity of the franchise will drop and they won’t have an audience for the last films. Perhaps he and the executives at WB ought to take a look at the HP fandom before making stupid statements like that. Not only does it show no signs of diminishing, the number of people enjoying the books and films increases every year as more young readers (and adults willing to take a chance) pick up the stories. The main reason WB are likely to lose an audience is through stupid moves like the one they pulled yesterday!
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