There was bad news for fans of the Harry Potter movies on Thursday with the announcement by Warner Bros. that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been rescheduled for a 17 July 2009 release, a frustrating delay of eight months beyond the original release date (November 2008).

Alan Horn, president and chief operating officer of Warner Bros. claimed that the delay was a result of the recent writers' strike and that it was "agreed the best strategy was to move Half-Blood Prince to July." Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, reassured fans that "The studio's release plans for the two-part Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will not be affected by this change." Part 1 of The Deathly Hallows is still scheduled for a release in November 2010, with Part 2 hard on its heals in May 2011.

The Half-Blood Prince is the sixth instalment in J.K. Rowling's insanely popular series tracing the coming of age of the boy wizard Harry Potter and the return to power of the Dark Lord, Voldemort. The novel's publication in 2005 set a new benchmark in sales with an unheard of nine million copies flying off the shelves in the first 24 hours (a record that was shattered by the 2007 publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). Set during Harry Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts, the novel takes us back to Voldemort's childhood and traces his first rise to power which came to a sudden end with his attempt to kill the infant Harry. As for Harry himself, we find him dealing with the usual adolescent issues confronting a young man (girls), at the same time that Dumbledore prepares him for a far more terrible encounter that is fast approaching.

Each instalment becomes darker and more satisfying as the challenges the children face become more complex and adult, and if the new trailer for the movie is anything to go by, we're in for a grim treat.