[GameMaster]

Interesting Fact: The Director of Industry Relations at my school came into our class yesterday to have a little talk with us (she used to work in the movie biz).

And during the talk, the topic of Harry Potter came up because she was talking about how movie dates are pretty much set in stone. Because when the big movies choose their release dates, other big movies want to avoid releasing on the same day because then both sides lose money battling for ticket sales.

However, on the very rare occasion when a date is pushed back, it's only because of money, never production. If they're running behind on post-production or something, they just hire as many people as they need to finish by the release date.

So this lady that came in yesterday told us that the only reason Harry Potter was pushed back from winter '08 to summer '09 is because Dark Knight had made soooo much money that Warner Bros. had met and exceeded their fiscal profit goal for the year. And they wanted to save Harry Potter (another cash-cow) for 2009 to help them meet the fiscal profit goal for '09.

So Harry Potter probably was finished and complete this past winter. Ideally, they've been spending this extra ~6 months polishing it.