Shuffling Fall Films

-- Publishers Weekly, 8/18/2008 8:39:00 AM

Last week, Warner Bros. announced that the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which had been scheduled for a November 21 release, would be pushed back to July 17, 2009, and as a result two major fall movies—Twilight and Bolt —have moved in to fill the void.

Disney’s Bolt, a CGI-animated film about a TV star dog who is convinced he has superpowers, moved its release up by five days to take up the newly evacuated spot. However, Bolt won’t get quite as much breathing room as might have been thought: Twilight, based on the first book in Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling series, will go head to head with the Disney film on November 21. The Summit Entertainment movie had originally been set to release on December 12.

In response to the earlier movie release date, Disney has moved its publication of its Bolt hardcover picture book from October 14 to September 9, while Random House is keeping its Bolt tie-in schedule unchanged. Little, Brown says it has no plans to change the dates for its Twilight tie-ins. And Scholastic has moved its Harry Potter tie-in program to June 2009, from November 2008.