Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, originally scheduled to open in November, will only be released next year.
Studio Warner Bros was forced to delay the film’s release by eight months because the movie might not be ready to compete during the Christmas box office season.
“Like every other studio, we are still feeling the repercussions of the writers’ strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films, changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of,” an official statement read. “We agreed the best strategy was to move Half-Blood Prince to July, where it perfectly fills the gap for a major tent pole release for mid-summer.”
