WB Chief Alan Horn Has Words for Harry Potter Fans

Posted by Adam Sweeney (adam@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 21, 2008

After the decision to push back Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to a Summer release, Warner Bros. has a lot of explaining to do. The Half-Blood Prince, originally set for a November 21st release, will now premiere July 17,2009, much to the dismay of Hogwarts fans everywhere. Warner Bros. President and Chief Operating Officer Alan Horn offered a few reasons for the delay: “we know the summer season is an ideal window for a family tent pole release… [and] 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.”

The explanation seemed to only fan the flame, resulting in a barrage of letters written to Horn from pissed off Potter pals. Now, Warner Bros. has issued the following statement:

Many of you have written to me to express your disappointment in our moving “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to Summer 2009.

Please be assured that we share your love for Harry Potter and would certainly never do anything to hurt any of the films. Over the past 10 years, we have nurtured and protected each film, and the integrity of the books on which they are based, to the best of our ability.

The decision to move “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” was not taken lightly, and was never intended to upset our Harry Potter fans. We know you have built the series into what it is, and we thank you for your ongoing enthusiasm and support.

If I may offer a silver lining: there would have been a two year gap between “Half-Blood Prince” and the much anticipated first part of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which opens in November 2010.

So although we have to wait a little longer for “Half-Blood Prince,” the wait from that until “Deathly Hallows” will be less than 18 months. I’m sorry to have disappointed you now, but if you hold on a littler longer, I believe it will be worth the wait.

Alan Horn

President, Chief Operating Officer

Warner Bros.

Personally, the statement sounds like the equivalent of a parent telling a child there won’t be any toys for Christmas, then explaining “But guess what, little Timmy, that means you’ll get more toys to open next Christmas!” It doesn’t lighten the disappointment or change the fact that the kid wants to kick Mom and Dad in the shins. Still, I respect Horn for at least coming out with an apology to HP fans. He could have easily said “Piss off, we can do what we want,” and skipped away with Michigan J. Frog.

The first mistake was to release a teaser with the release date attached before The Dark Knight. Fans are having a hard time buying into the fact that this was a financial decision after the 500+ million the Caped Crusader is set to bring Warner Bros. It probably would have served them well to hold off until this decision had been made.

In the end I think Harry Potter fans will moan, but will the release upset many to the point of boycotting the film franchise? Absolutely not.

What do you think of Horn’s statement? Will a Summer release of Half-Blood Prince stop you from seeing it?

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