Warner Bros. says it’s bumping “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” from its planned November release into next summer.

The sixth installment in the blockbuster franchise about boy wizard Harry now will open July 17 rather than Nov. 21, the studio said Thursday.

Studio President and Chief Operating Officer Alan Horn says the studio has had success with past summer “Harry Potter” releases, including the fifth movie. Horn also says the Writers Guild of America strike had “impacted the readiness of scripts for other films — changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of.”

Let’s face it. After “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” most, if not all of us, prepared ourselves for the end of the epic series. Knowing that we would no longer be able to enjoy the magical feeling of Hogwarts ever again, most of us resorted to scanning through our old books, recognizing the most important details the story had to offer. We felt a sort of Harry heartbreak, scared that the story would never continue again. This, though, is only half true. Harry Potter will never again hit the bookshelves, but the wizard world will return to our bookstores this December with the help of J.K. Rowling. Read the rest of this entry »