Warner Bros. recently announced that they’re pushing back the release of the sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—which had been scheduled for 21 November—to 17 July 2009. Leaping to fill the new void, Walt Disney moved the release of its animated film Bolt from a week later to that date. Not content to leave Disney with the slot, Summit Entertainment announced that they, too, are taking that slot, with Twilight, which they’d been set to release on 12 December.
Bolt is about a TV star dog who is convinced he has superpowers. Twilight is based on the first volume of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire series.
And in the all-important tie-ins, Disney is changing the publication date of the Bolt hardcover picture book from 14 October to 9 September (Random House isn’t changing its Bolt tie-in schedule). Little, Brown is making no changes in its Twilight tie-in schedule. But Scholastic is shifting its Harry Potter tie-ins from this November to June 2009.