LA Times (9/13/08): “Studios shift movie schedules after delay of Harry Potter film”

Someday when Hollywood studios have succeeded in their grand distribution scheme and we all have digital download implants in our brains, scheduling movie debuts in a limited number of theaters won’t be a zero-sum game anymore. Until then, it’s a chess game:

In the Harry Potter stories, wizards play chess with life-size, animated pieces.

But when Warner Bros. pushed the release of the next film in the Potter franchise, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” from Nov. 21 to summer 2009, the studio set off a chess game of another sort that’s being played out in Hollywood.

In the last few weeks, distributors have shifted several major fall releases — including the animated 3-D comedy “Bolt,” the vampire thriller “Twilight,” the James Bond adventure “Quantum of Solace” and the epic romance “Australia” — to new dates in November, hoping to take advantage of the box-office void created by Harry’s departure.

All part of that whole tentpole movie thing.