Warner Bros. Bumps ‘Potter,’ Botches EW Fall Movie Preview

As NPR noted this morning, Entertainment Weekly’s Fall Movie Preview issue, currently in subscribers’ hands, has a distinctly “Dewey Beats Truman” air about it now that Warner Bros. announced it has pushed “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” to July.

The studio reported that moving the Potter film to next summer made more sense from a event/fiscal tentpole perspective, but as EW itself reported this morning, This could simply be a byproduct of the accounting department wanting to spread out its good fortune for the next fiscal year. “The Dark Knight” has already overperformed by about 100 percent beyond expectations, so they don’t really need another huge hit in 2008. In other words, they don’t want to have to climb a bigger mountain next year in terms of matching this year’s profits.

But I still want to know: why didn’t EW know what was going on elsewhere at the company before it put out this issue. One hand clearly didn’t know what the other was doing.