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Warner Bros. made news recently when it announced Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was moving from a November 2008 release date to summer of 2009, but that wasn’t the only schedule change they had planned. They’ve released further changes for next year’s film slate, and two titles in particular are worth mentioning.

Spike Jonze’s rumor-plagued adaption of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are has finally been given a release date. WB has scheduled the film for release on October 16th of next year, which still leaves the studio plenty of time for the on again off again re-shoots and re-edits that have been hinted at and denied over the past several months. The live action film stars Benicio Del Toro, Forest Whitaker, and Catherine Keener. Based purely on Jonze’s past films and the book itself, the movie is guaranteed to look great, but will it become a classic? We only have to wait a full year to find out.

Richard Kelly’s The Box, starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, has actually been bumped up six months. If a release being pushed back is seen as a bad thing then shouldn’t the opposite be viewed as something positive? The movie will now open March 20th, which is actually close to the film’s original release date before it was pushed back this past June. Kelly’s two films so far have been a mixed bag… on the one hand there’s the fucked up genius of Donnie Darko, and on the other there’s the fucked up indulgence of Southland Tales. The Box is based on the story, “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson, about a couple who are given a mysterious box with a button by a stranger. If they press the button they’ll receive a financial windfall, but someone they don’t know will die. Awesome moral dilemma, but can it be stretched to feature length? We’ll find out next March.

Head on over to ComingSoon.net for some further Warner Bros. schedule shifts for 2009.