Columnist reflects on her anger of Harry Potter movie cancellations

September 23, 2008 — by Nandini Ruparel

I was shocked. Hurt beyond belief.

Paralyzed, in front of the news article that said that it was delayed. I had just found out that premier of the 6th Harry Potter movie (Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince) had been pushed back eight months. I wanted to yell at people, but I tried to use meditation to calm down. After that completely failed, I went downstairs and used a bowl of chocolate ice cream to relax myself. Whether heartbreak is caused by movie producers or ex-boyfriends, Ben and Jerry are always there to help.

I was shocked. Hurt beyond belief.

Paralyzed, in front of the news article that said that it was delayed. I had just found out that premier of the 6th Harry Potter movie (Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince) had been pushed back eight months. I wanted to yell at people, but I tried to use meditation to calm down. After that completely failed, I went downstairs and used a bowl of chocolate ice cream to relax myself. Whether heartbreak is caused by movie producers or ex-boyfriends, Ben and Jerry are always there to help.

When I had calmed down enough to think rationally about what happened, I tuned into MuggleCast, the podcast for Harry Potter freaks like me, to hear what other fans were doing. Frankly, it didn’t help. They couldn’t fix the problem, either. There seemed to be many plans of action, but nothing that seemed even vaguely plausible. Even on Facebook, groups appeared telling me to boycott the movie in protest of its delayed premier, an idea that seemed rather ironic and more intellectually worthy of Twilight fans. Boycotting the movie was not at option, since I’d rather see the movie eight months later than not at all.

I thought maybe I’d send a forceful letter to Warner Brothers, the studio in charge of production. This decision was not brought about by the fact that I thought it would make a difference—it was a request from my family to “do something!” instead of ranting about how much it sucked to not have a Harry Potter movie to watch in November.

In the end, of course, I did not end up writing my letter. I told myself that my reason for giving up was that my letter would have been so rude that I couldn’t possibly send it off without feeling like a horrible person, but the real reason my lack of arguments against the move.

Although it was really irritating that they had released the teaser trailer right before telling us it was delayed (eight months, no less!), my annoyance was not a very compelling reason for the bigwigs at Warner Brothers to change their minds. As my brother in speech and debate might tell me, “Do you have any evidence to support that?” And quite frankly, what kind of evidence would I have that I was irritated? Other than the fistful of hair I had yanked out upon hearing the news, none at all.

Also there was absolutely no way to argue the fact that this was a fiscally motivated decision. Since the movies that were meant to come out next year were delayed by the writers’ strike, they pushed back Harry Potter in order to have a guaranteed financial success next year. If they couldn’t make money, then there wouldn’t even be any Harry Potter movies! And let me tell you, a delayed Harry Potter movie is better than none at all. So even though I fumed out loud about how greedy these large corporate companies are, I knew that I was actually just really glad they were there to make fans like me happy.

And even though I knew that it was sad that the movie was delayed, like Alan Horn, the president of Warner Brothers, pointed out, it meant that there wouldn’t be such a long gap between the 6th and 7th movies.

So, I’ve gotten over my heartbreak. But Warner Brothers beware: if you decide to delay the seventh movie, I will send that letter.

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