‘Potter’ trailers and magazine covers still say November

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

One more dispatch about the Great Muggle Rebellion of 2008: I just took my son, Ben, to see ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ for the second time (George Lucas may have plenty of cynical critics but my Lego-loving, Jedi-worshiping 6-year-old is not one of them). ‘The Clone Wars’ is being distributed by Warner Bros. so what was the first trailer we saw before the movie? That would be ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ and, at the end, the last word on the screen, written in wavering letters, was ‘November.’ I heard chuckles and even a few boos when the word popped up.

It occurred to me as the screen went dark how difficult it is going to be for Warner Bros. to put the brakes on the massive marketing machine that has been gearing up fans everywhere for a November release and now has to tell them to put their wands away until the summer of 2009. ‘Entertainment Weekly,’ for instance, just hit the stands with the ‘Half-Blood Prince’ on the cover, which must be infuriating for editors at the publication. Everyone wants to be first, but no one wants to give their cover to a movie that is almost a year away. Some of the frustration is clear on an ‘EW’ blog post written by Jeff Giles, who compared it to the infamous ‘Dewey defeats Truman’ headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune.

Empire Magazine in the U.K. also has a cover story this week on the sixth film about the boy wizard. Harry looks appropriately battered, just like his dazed fans across the globe. The text on the cover blares that the issue is devoted to ’45 New Movies You Need to Know About Right Now!’ Well, make that 44 movies on the urgent, need-to-know list and one more about a Hogwarts student who surprised the world by getting enrolled in the 2009 session of summer school...

-- Geoff Boucher

Image courtesy of Empire Magazine

Related

Complete ‘Harry Potter’ coverage on Hero Complex