This one made me whimper aloud: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince pushed back to summer 2009. The details are all in that link, but here’s a key quote from the press release:

In making the announcement, [WB President Alan] Horn stated, “Our reasons for shifting ‘Half-Blood Prince’ to summer are twofold: we know the summer season is an ideal window for a family tent pole 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. Additionally, 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. 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.”

OK, I lied: The most disappointing bit of this release is the news — not new, but still, it hurts — that David Yates will also direct the two-part Deathly Hallows. Yates directed the last HP film, Order of the Phoenix, and to my mind stripped it of a very key point: In the film’s climactic sequence, the kids hardly did any fighting. They weren’t in the battle; they were in trouble, then they were rescued by adults. That’s not what happens; what happens is they become really aware of the seriousness of the fight they’re in — not just because of a certain death, but because they’re casting spells and fighting for their lives in a way that only Harry has experienced before.

In Yates’ film, though, the older generation saves the day. There were other changes, of course, and the film was too Cliffs-Notesy, lacking emotional heft, but that was the most egregious mistake of the lot.

Sad. Sad, sad, sad. Bring Alfonso Cuarón back, damn you!

Anyway. None of this makes the first trailer for Half-Blood Prince any less awesome:

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