Bad news for Harry Potter fans: due to a lackluster schedule for next summer, Warner Bros. has decided to move the next Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, from this November to about a year from now, July 17, 2009. You can blame the writers' strike, which left the studio without much to develop for the crucial summer slate, says Variety. It's especially bad timing, as Daniel Radcliffe, soon to be seen al fresco on Broadway in Equus, graces the Fall Movie Preview cover of Entertainment Weekly, out this week.

Well, maybe. Brit JK Rowling, the Harry Potter lady, and Warner Bros, the studio behind the movie versions, are suing New York publisher RDR Books over an encyclopedia devoted to the boy wizard and other characters from the series. A witness list needs to be handed to the judge for the New York Federal District court case by April 4 and Ms. Rowling is expected to be on it, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. A lawyer for RDR Books said Rowling was expected to appear to give evidence in the case. "We asked for her and they said they would provide her," said lawyer David Hammer. The case is set for hearings starting April 14, so we're guessing the Harry Potter nerds will start setting up tents and lawn chairs to catch a glimpse of the mysterious Ms. Rowling some time next week. Bring your Gryffindor scarfs, kids, it's still chilly out there! More details about the case after the jump.  read more »

The publishing industry is going through Harry Potter withdrawal symptoms without their yearly fix, but Hollywood just pulled off a trick that will keep its profitable hero into the next decade, according to the Los Angeles Times. Warner Bros. Pictures and the producers behind the $4.5-billion Harry Potter film franchise will split the seventh and final novel in the J.K. Rowling series into two films. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I will hit theaters in November 2010, followed by Part II in May 2011. Daniel Radcliffe pretends this is an honor to the book and not just a reason to make lots of dough after the jump.  read more »

Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter, has closed on a $4.9 million condo at 1 Morton Square, his second downtown apartment purchase in the past year. The New York Times reported the sale two weeks ago, but the deed just appeared in city records today.

The 18-year-old had been renting out the $4.3 million condo on Mercer Street he bought last November.  read more »

Apples don't fall far from the tree. Madonna’s 11-year-old daughter Lourdes has apparently "inherited her mother's hunger for fame" and has been offered a role in the next Harry Potter film, a source close to the Material Girl told The Sun. This was not the first time Lourdes, whose father is fitness trainer Carlos Leon, has flirted with the entertainment industry.

“After all her recent public appearances, looking more like a sophisticated teen than a child, the attention on her is really growing. Offers have poured in—film offers, sponsorship. An executive at Warners wanted to cast Lola in the last Potter film and has renewed his interest for the next movie. Lola would love to do it—she is a huge fan,” the unnamed source is quoted as saying.

Sometimes, with the unimaginable chaos in Iraq half-a-world away, we must turn to young celebrities, like Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, to remind us about the horrors of war. Speaking today about his role in British television’s My Boy Jack, in which he plays pro-war propagandist Rudyard Kipling’s son, Mr. Radcliffe, 18, said: “I think it is as relevant today as it ever was with young men all over the world still sacrificing their lives in the name of war.”

My Boy Jack was aired in the U.K. in conjunction with Remembrance Day; it’s also the subject of an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London. In his introduction to the retrospective, the actor explains: “I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like in the trenches living amongst the stench of death and knowing that at any moment it may be your last.”

Lest We Forget: Potter star on First World War [Reuters via Yahoo]

Daniel Radcliffe is gonna get naked in New York! The successful London revivial of Equus is coming to Broadway, along with Mr. Radcliffe. He plays the disturbed adolescent Alan Strang, an English stable boy who blinded six horses with a spike. Richard Griffiths, the Tony-award winning stage actor who played his bumbling, meanie uncle in the Harry Potter movies, takes on the role of psychiatrist Martin Dysart, who attempts to discover the source of Strang's psychosis.

According to the Daily Mail, the revival of Peter Shaffer's play will open at a Shubert theater in September 2008:

[I]t took months of negotiations to secure a deal with the theatre-owning Shubert Organisation and for the producers David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers to sort out all the paperwork for the play's two leading men to perform in New York.

Director Thea Sharrock will begin rehearsals next August.

"We're delighted that New York is now going to witness Richard and Daniel's extraordinary performances," Mr Pugh told me.

Both have special status with the American actors union Equity because of their international reputations, Griffiths through stage work including the Tony award he won for The History Boys and Daniel due to his performances as JK Rowling's adolescent hero Harry Potter.

Although there will be a rush to buy tickets to see Daniel and Griffiths act, there will be those who will just want to see him with his kit off.

J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. filed a lawsuit at Manhattan federal court today over a book billed as an unofficial encyclopedic companion to the Harry Potter book series, according to Reuters. They claim the book infringes copyright and attempts to cash in on the successful series.  read more »

Variety reports out an interesting take on the record-breaking sales of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

While the book and movie businesses are structured very differently, dollars the franchise generated domestically this weekend for its creator and distributor surpass what a studio might take in for a hit tentpole. Publishers typically sell books to wholesalers and retailers for a 40%-45% discount off the retail price, which means the Saturday sales alone could generate more than $150 million in receipts for Scholastic and Rowling.

8.3 million copies of the book sold in the first 24 hours after its midnight release July 21. When you consider that almost all of the marketing and advertising costs are borne by the retailers, that's a lot of dosh.

A day before the long-awaited final installment of Harry Potter comes out...

A reader sends in an image of this bumper sticker on a car in Brooklyn. (Apparently, it's been a sell-out item at Potter-fan gatherings. Go figure.)