The release date for the sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was pushed back on Thursday to July 2009 from its original slot in November 2008, movie studio Warner Brothers said. Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc, said it had decided to make the change to bolster its release schedule for the lucrative summer moviegoing season - a period that can account for as much as 40 percent of Hollywood’s annual box office receipts.
Warner Brothers President Alan Horn said the studio was also still feeling repercussions from the three-month Hollywood screenwriters strike that ended in February but has “impacted the readiness of scripts for other films. We know the summer season is an ideal window for a family . . . release, as proven by the success of our last Harry Potter film, which is the second-highest grossing film in the franchise, behind only the first installment,” Horn said.
The studio said the change of date would not alter production plans for the final, two-part Potter movie adventure, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The release date for part one is tentatively set for November 2010.
I call BS on this. After ruining Order of the Phoenix by forcing a shorter cut, now they are sticking it to Harry Potter fans by delaying the movie so Warner can make more money. What a blatant example of the hubris and greed of movie executives. I’d say that I would boycott the movie next summer to send a message to Warner that the Harry Potter movies should be about the fans. It will make money no matter how long it is, whenever it opens. But who am I kidding, I’m a Potter fan, and I’ll be seeing it opening weekend in November or July. I just felt the need to comment on the corporate greed that is ruining the Harry Potter franchise - again - for its fans.
After months of rumors, Warner Brothers and the producers of the massively successful movies will announce Thursday that they plan to split Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling’s seventh and final Harry Potter novel, into two blockbuster films - one to be released in November 2010 and the second in May 2011, says the Los Angeles Times.
The films will be titled, simply, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II, according to producer David Heyman. Director David Yates, who returned for his second tour of Potter duty with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and is quite popular with the cast, will direct both Deathly Hallows films, which will be filmed concurrently. Screenwriter Steve Kloves also returns and, by completion of the franchise, will have written seven of the eight films.
Continue reading Warner Brothers Official Splitting Deathly Hallows
The Wall Street Journal has learned the main plot of the new Toy Story film:
In Pixar’s coming movie Toy Story 3, Woody the cowboy and his toy-box friends are dumped in a day-care center after their owner, Andy, leaves for college.
The sdtuio will re-release Disney Digital 3-D versions of Toy Story on October 2nd 2009 and Toy Story 2 on February 12th 2010 to celebrate the 3D-produced third film’s release on June 18th 2010.
Mugglenet is reporting that two new actors have been cast for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. David Legeno will play the role of the werewolf, Fenrir Greyback and Ralph Ineson has been cast for the part of Death Eater Amycus Carrow.
Director David Yates is presently working on the sixth installment in the Harry Potter series and many expected he would step aside for someone else to handle the film version of the seventh and final installment. One of those people was young adult author Lois Lowry who’s keenly awaiting a film adaptation of her book “The Giver” which Yates is attached too. Now, on her official blog she reveals a Giver movie will be delayed as Yates looks set to handle Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after all.
“Bad news from The Giver Movie front. David Yates, the director currently working on the next Harry Potter film, was supposed to begin The Giver film next. But he has just decided he wants to do the final Harry Potter first, thereby postponing The Giver by several years.
Maybe the opening of this film could be held simultaneously with my celebration-of-life service after I succumb to old age? Or the producers will decide to get a different director. Stand by. But without holding your breath.”
Owen Wilson is going back to work for the first time since his suicide attempt last summer. Wilson and Jennifer Aniston begin shooting March 10 on 20th Century Fox’s Marley & Me, the tale of a couple that adopts a dog to give parenthood a trial run then finds the mischievous pooch more than they bargained for. After he was hospitalized last August, Wilson dropped out of this summer’s comedy Tropic Thunder, which already had been in production. He was replaced by Matthew McConaughey. Due out Christmas Day, Marley & Me is directed by David Frankel and based on the book by John Grogan. Alan Arkin co-stars.
Danny Huston, Taylor Kitsch, will.i.am and Lynn Collins have joined the cast of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Fox’s X-Men spinoff starring Hugh Jackman. Ryan Reynolds is making a cameo in the tentpole film being directed by Gavin Hood. Wolverine, set 17 years before the X-Men movies, traces the origins of the popular mutant superhero. Huston, who most recently appeared in 30 Days of Night, is playing Stryker, the military general who subjected Wolverine to the experiment that laced his bones with an unbreakable metal called adamantium. Brian Cox played the character in X2: X-Men United.
Kitsch, one of the stars of NBC’s Friday Night Lights, is playing Gambit, a Cajun thief whose powers include the manipulation of kinetic energy, which allows him to use card-throwing to deadly effect. Will.i.am, frontman of hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas, will play Wraith, a mutant with the power to turn himself translucent. Collins will play as Kayla Silverfox, Wolverine’s lover and a member of Team X, a superpowered covert ops team. Reynolds, onscreen in Definitely, Maybe, will appear as Deadpool, a wisecracking mercenary.
Continue reading Stryker, Wraith, Deadpool And Gambit Join Wolverine
Ain’t It Cool News is reporting that Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell will play Heath Ledger’s character in scenes not yet filmed for director Terry Gilliam’s fantasy, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as a tribute to the late actor. The movie also stars Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield and Verne Troyer. The picture tells the story of Dr Parnassus and his extraordinary ‘Imaginarium’, a travelling show where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom.
Paramount is pushing its highly anticipated Star Trek movie to May 8, 2009, from an original Christmas 2008 release, to take advantage of the summer box-office season, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Star Trek is moving to summer because its has so much box-office potential,” Paramount spokesman Michael Vollman told the trade paper. “It does not need any script tweaks. They’re two-thirds of the way through shooting, and we would have delivered a great movie at Christmas.”
Star Trek is one of several films the studio shuffled to new dates now that the writers’ strike has ended. Trek’s shift is reportedly unrelated to script or cast considerations. Replacing Trek on Paramount’s holiday 2008 schedule is the Brad Pitt-Cate Blanchett fantasy film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which moves to Dec. 19 from Nov. 26. Case 39, meanwhile, moves to April 10, 2009, from Aug. 22 of this year. And Nowhereland, an Eddie Murphy fantasy comedy previously set for Sept. 26, now will bow June 12, 2009.
Sam Worthington will star in Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, reports Variety. The fact the Australian actor just played the lead in the James Cameron-directed Avatar is no coincidence, added the trade. Cameron recommended Worthington to Terminator Salvation director McG. Worthington will play the role of Marcus, a central figure in a three-picture arc that begins after Skynet has destroyed much of humanity in a nuclear holocaust. A group of survivors led by John Connor (Christian Bale) struggles to keep the machines from finishing the job. Terminator Salvation is targeting a summer 2009 release.