Even Earlier: Harry Potter Moves Up Release Date

Harry Potter now is able to find a quiet moment to himself.  

Remember how yesterday we found out that “Star Trek” had moved up its release from midnight to 7:00 pm on May 7th? Well, now ComingSoon says ”Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” has outdone the Enterprise crew by moving it’s release from Friday July 17th to Wednesday July 15th.

Warner Brothers has had some success with this before–”Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” earned $44 million alone on its Wednesday debut during 2007. The five day opening “weekend” gave it a total of $139 million. With that in mind, I guess the only question is why WB didn’t plan it this way from the start.

It’s funny, although there are undoubtedly still millions (billions?!) of Harry Potter fans, somehow the whole Potter-mania feels like it happened a decade ago. Without a book release pending, news and buzz has been relatively low about the movie. I’m not saying the movie’s going to flop–I’m sure it will make tremendous amounts of money. But the whole sort of communal, world-wide frenzy that used to accompany any Harry Potter entity seems to have faded into something that will soon be more like part of a “I Love the Aughts” special than something of the moment. Just like the Lord of the Rings books, the Harry Potter books will continue to be read for decades to come, but the feeling of “All Potter All the Time” seems to have passed.