Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince Movie

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is being described as an excursion into the dark side for this venerable series, but don't let the chatter fool you. Now in its sixth episode shot over an eight-year span, with two more features still to come, this one-of-a-kind film cycle has become as comfortable and reliable as an old shoe, providing a degree of dependability that's becoming increasingly rare.

Harry Potter, the teen wizard whose films have generated billions of dollars and become one of Hollywood's biggest franchises, is known for battling the evil Lord Voldemort. Now he's about to confront an even darker foe: A soft DVD market. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the sixth installment in the Warner Bros. film series, will be released July 15, and expectations are that it will be one of the year's biggest blockbusters. The previous five "Potter" movies have generated $7.

Talk about a disappearing act: Harry Potter just vanished from the 2008 movie schedule. Warner Bros. shocked fans around the globe Thursday when it announced that "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the sixth installment in the massively successful film franchise about a young wizard and his friends, would not hit theaters in November as planned. The film will instead be delayed eight months and arrive on July 17, according to Alan Horn, Warner Bros. president and chief operating officer.

Steve Kloves, who, with the exception of "The Order of the Phoenix," has adapted all the "Harry Potter" books for film, talks about the upcoming "Half-Blood Prince," the confrontation between Alan Rickman's Snape and Michael Gambon's Dumbledore and reveals that he created an entirely new scene: The showdown "is informed by everything [readers] have come to know is true," Kloves says.

Remember those records that "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" set during its first week at the box office last month? In a few days they could be ancient history. More than 4,000 sold-out midnight screenings via ticketing websites Fandango and MovieTickets, and massive audience interest, as indicated by pre-release polling, point to a record-breaking opening Wednesday for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" in the U.S. and Canada.

Special makeup designer Nick Dudman had to scramble to complete the look of the werewolf Death Eater Fenrir Greyback in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." "They didn't select [actor Dave Legeno] until quite late, and we didn't have a lot of time," Dudman explained. Luckily, this wasn't some two-bit indie production; this was a big-budget Warner Bros. blockbuster, with the resources to go with it. "We had about 10 people on just that one character," Dudman said.

Michael Gambon has played Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore for five years, but he hasn't been setting a good example for his students when it comes to finishing their homework: The beloved old wizard hasn't cracked a single one of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" novels. The choice not to read Rowling's book series, he explains, is deliberate, and he points out that costars Ralph Fiennes and Alan Rickman haven't taken up the books either. "You'd get upset about all the scenes it's missing from the book, wouldn't you?"