Has been pushed back from Thanksgiving weekend until July 17, 2009.  Which sucks because the teaser trailer got us all pumped for the movie.  Basically, Warner Brothers doesn’t have jack for this summer because of the writer’s strike, so they’re using ole Harry to bolster their revenues.  Strange, because the winter-released Potter films did financially better than the summer-release films.  “Like every other studio, we are still feeling the repercussions of the writer’s strike,” said Warners head Alan Horn “which impacted the readiness of the scripts for other films, changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of.”

Remember when we all finished Harry Potter and the Super Duper Long Seventh Book of Wizarding Awesomeness? That was a good book - full of magic and excitement and sadness because Harry’s tale officially ended.

And we thought that that might be the end of this particular universe, so we slooowly dragged out each and every page as the boy wizard saga reached it’s ultimate conclusion.

Well, J.K. Rowling, billionaire maestro behind this whole shebang, has gone and pulled a George Lucas on us by offering up The Tales of Beedle the Bard this December.

That’s right, the book of five fairy tales Albus Dumbledore gave to Hermione Granger will be yours for the low low price of $12.99. It’s available for pre-order now and will hit bookshelves on Dec. 4 just in time for that Christmas holiday. Now that’s something straight outta George Lucas’s playbook.

“Oh hey, it’s Christmas time you’re kid would really love another Harry Potter book.” So um, hint hint Mom? MORE »

Harry’s going to some dark places. This looks more like some epic Biblical fantasy movie than it does a family-friendly wizard story. It looks like Harry Potter has grown up. USA Today had posted a few pictures in a generic fluff piece yesterday.

The biggest thing they reveal is that young Tom Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort, is being played by Ralph Fiennes’s 11-year-old nephew Hero Fiennes-Tiffin. That’s good stuff, keeping it in the family.

“His mother (Martha Fiennes) is a film director, and Hero was very focused and disciplined,” [director David] Yates says. “The fact that he’s related to Ralph wasn’t the primary reason for choosing him. It was an advantage that he looked very similar to Ralph. Of course that was useful. But primarily I went for Hero because of this wonderful haunted quality that seemed to bring Tom Riddle alive on-screen for us.”

Yates stressed how hard it can be for very young actors to find the necessary dark place to play such a creepy character.

“But even though he’s the nicest child you’d ever want to meet, sweet-natured and pleasant, he got the corners and dark moods and odd spirit of the character.”

To be honest, until I saw the trailer I entirely forgot what Book 6 was about. I’m still a little hazy around the edges, but I remember Harry and Dumbledore go around looking to destroy the soul of Voldemort.

As we turned the last pages of the final Harry Potter novel, The Deathly Hallows it was a bittersweet affair.  Everyone who got sucked into the boy wizard saga probably felt a void and that generally feeling of that can’t be it? Can it?

Luckily for fans it wasn’t it.  Author J.K. Rowling took part in an online auction this past month wherein she scribble an 800-word prequel to Harry Potter on a postcard that sold for an astounding $48,585.  You can read that story here, though it isn’t always easy to read Rowling’s handwriting.

Now she’s participating in writing a story that will be turned into a mini-movie that will be shot with actors Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe.  According to the Sunday Mirror the movie will be shown as part of the Universal Studios theme park The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter in Orlando, Florida.

The movie and some additional clips and sequences for the theme park will be shot in Leavesden, Herts, UK before the trio begin filming movie number seven.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is expected to open late next year or early 2010.  The 20-acre island will feature attractions, shops and restaurants set inside  locations such as the Forbidden Forest, Hogsmeade Village and the iconic Hogwarts castle.  Concept art for Hogsmeade can be seen above.  It looks pretty cool in that sort of kitschy Disney/theme park kind of way.

I see no downside to an amusement park like this, even if it does cheapen the Harry Potter experience a bit.

There is no word on what this story or movie will entail, but you can expect there will be interest for it when it does arrive.  [via]

The author of Harry Potter was picked for Harvard’s 2008 Commencement speech, but some students aren’t sold on the muggle. Some of them feel that the bajillionaire is, get this, beneath them. Oh, and there’s the usual hangups about witchcraft, the devil and homosexuals.

“Our commencement speaker tricked parents into letting their kids read books filled with sex, murder, and homosexual role models,” said Adam Goldenberg, a Canadian student who writes for the Harvard Crimson, the daily newspaper at the university.

“Harvard seniors have every right to demand a Harvard-calibre speaker. Harry Potter – and JK Rowling – is just a flash in the pan. Writing bedtime stories is lame – just ask Tolkien and CS Lewis. The class of 2008 has been royally screwed by Harvard. A petty pop culture personality of questionable permanence will send us on our merry way, while figures of real substance wait in the wings.”

I would hardly call Tolkein or CS Lewis mere bedtime story tellers and like those two heavyweights, Rowling elevates mere fantasy/mythology to a grandeur unseen in most literature.

To balance off the slight of author J.K. Rowling, Harvard students enlisted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to speak on Class Day. Obviously, it goes without saying that Robin Williams is available for commencement. Seems like he might be “highbrow” enough for all those smaht kids.