Fox News is reporting that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is being delayed due to Daniel Radcliffe waving his magic wand around on Broadway. Warner Bros. has delayed the film’s release until June 2009 as Daniel Radcliffe will be appearing nude on stage in Equus in November, close to the original release date.
Warner Bros. has announced moving its sixth Potter film, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” from Nov. 21, 2008, to July 17, 2009. The reason? Officially, there is no reason, except that “a spot opened on the summer schedule.”
That’s not much of a reason. The real story? Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe will be right in the middle of his sensational, highly publicized run on Broadway in the play, “Equus.” Radcliffe appears naked in the play, on stage, and has sex in it as well. That’s not the image Warner Bros. wants associated with bespectacled Harry, who remains chaste and virginal.
Indeed, posters for Equus are up all over New York, of Radcliffe’s naked torso superimposed on a horse’s head. This is not the sort of thing that’s taught at Hogwarts. For the movie to open on Nov. 21, Radcliffe would have to do publicity entailing answering questions about blinding horses and having sex with them vs. flying around and making potions.
However, it seems to be that the makers of the new film might be trying to trade on the nude aspect of Daniel’s career, as he’ll be appearing without pants in the new film. This won’t be full-frontal, it’s a kids’ film.
The actor – who has starred as the teen wizard in five movies in the franchise based on the books by JK Rowling – admits he was unsure when he was told he would be appearing without trousers in a scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
He said: “At first I thought I had pants on. Apparently not!”
However, Daniel – who has stripped off in the stage production of Equus – insists he isn’t worried about his fans seeing him nude on screen, adding: “It’s all old hat now, really!”
So much for Fox’s theory.
Daniel Radcliffe is currently nude on the back of a horse in Vogue, and all over billboards, so it is possible that Daniel won’t be typecast as a wizard much longer, but rather as a horse mutilating psychopath. There’s probably an Oscar in that for him, but not as many merchandising opportunities.
Defamer suggests that the film has been delayed to try and emulate this summer’s success with The Dark Knight, but regardless of when it is released I’m sure it’s going to make money. The site also points out that Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix came out of the heels of his underage London run of Equus.
What’s with the white English (Puritan) based cultures (Britain, USA, Canada; Australia, New Zealand etc.) Figure out that nude is not bad. The parts we keep hidden are not bad. We should thank Daniel for his artistic courage. With all that said above, it can not be easy to perform nude. Thanks to his talent and skill he does a good job and if someone in the audience is fixating on a private part or two, that is only because of the repressive culture has taken this part of nature away from him or her.
Idea: Get a hot tub, get naked with a friend or two, and put your energies into electing a president that will fix our tarnished image and failing economy. It might also be a good time to discuss waterboarding and the loss of habeas corpus. There are more important things than a naked 20 something.
I’ve got my tickets for October. No, seriously, I do.
Listen: If we’ve been forced to consider the sexual orientation of the fictive Prof. Dumbledore, envisioning the prospect of adolescent Harry being nude isn’t too big of a deal.
Besides, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pondered the feasibility of Hogwarts students hooking up in their dorms while reading the books.
The header pic makes me feel like I’m looking at kiddie porn.
*shiver*
How is it “kiddie porn” if he is over 18 in that photo?
Definately not kiddie porn, but I don’t find him wildly attractive, either.
However, I give Daniel Radcliffe (and/or his managers) a lot of credit for how they have chosen to ease him out of the Harry Potter mold.
He chose a controversial (slightly shocking) role, but it is also a respected play and, more importantly, he apparently has the acting ability to handle it and it gave everyone a completely different image of Radcliffe.
It was very well done.
@Kris – I didn’t say it *was* kiddie porn, I said “I feel like I’m looking…” etc.
Admit it, he looks really young in that pic. And the lighting makes it seem like those old Calvin Klein, basement-predator ads.
If it is ‘The Half-Blood Prince’ that got pushed back then why is there a refrence to an almost nude scene in ‘Deathly Hollows’? That’s the seventh book, not the sixth.
The movie shouldn’t be pushed back. November seems like it would be a good time for ‘The Half-Blood Prince’ to come out. ‘Goblet of Fire’ came out in Decemeber. Why are they so worried about The Dark Knight? It came out in July and should have no effect on how the sixth movie will do in the box office. Just pushing the release date back will piss off many people, me included.
Plus they will have to go back and edit the teaser trailer to change the November date.
Oh now I see. They want it to have a successful run like The Dark Knight.
Ha. No way that will happen.
Harry Potter is popular but it won’t do as well as The Dark Knight did. No way, no how.
On the pic where he’s sittng on the horse he looks like he’s farting light 🙂
Bless him, as long as he looks as nice as he does now, he should show it.
You’re right, Alex-it does look like he’s farting light!
He has awfully big feet, too.
harry potter was naked and i missed it?! dang…
A woman’s body is a work of art…who really wants to see a grown man naked, and especially on a horse?
“..who really wants to see a grown man naked, and especially on a horse?”
*Raises hand*
Robert Downey Junior, Christian Bale, Javier Bardem, Daniel Craig, Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro, Robert Downey Junior, the list goes on and on and on and on and on. Did I mention Robert Downey Junior?
Can take or leave the horse.
it makes sense from a promo standpoint. how can Dan go all over promoting this film if he’s starring on Broadway.
Good point, the horse only being a prop, on a horse, walking a horse, feeding a horse…..Christian Bale, Eric Bana, Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale…. Riding crop to keep me in line….Gotta go
Kris – the picture of him with the horse came out when he was 17 and just started the Equus play.
@ geronimo – Robert Downey Junior is hot. Check him out in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” if you haven’t seen it. Its one of my favorite movies.
Oh I have, javagirl. What clinched him for me was the episode of Ally Mcbeal when he sat at the piano and sang Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’. Plaintive, heart-breaking, slightly broken on the top notes, got me then and has me forever. Sigh.
Oh Johnny Depp is someone I would love to see naked on a horse… or on nothing at all.
Maybe a pool floatie sipping a cocktail. I like it.
Hmm. What grabbed MY attention just now, reading Helen’s article here, was the part about “horse mutilating psychopath.” Really? Is THAT what Equus is about, the story I mean? He plays a horse mutilating, NAKED psychopath? This sounds – veeeeeery interesting, very interesting. And strange! What is this play about?? Damn. Horse mutilating psychopath…
You know what this reminds me of? Remember when Elijah Woods had finished the Lord of the Rings films, and he was worried about becoming typecast as the cutie-pie little hobbit type, so the very next project he accepted was as a woman-mutilating psychopath in Robert Rodriguez’ Sin City? He did the hard-core role to shake the sweet, cute image of Frodo the hobbit. Maybe Radcliffe had the same idea, doing this naked horse mutilator thing.
I’d still love to see naked men on horses. Men get a pass ALL the time from full nudity, whilst women are constantly nude in films and no one bats an eye. We hardly EVER see men in all their nakedness on film or on stage. And when we do, there’s such a hullabaloo and hue and cry surrounding it, why the double standard?
@Snowblood – I read “Equus” a long time ago, but if I remember it correctly, the guy (Radcliffe’s character) is in therapy because he fell in love with a girl, tried to have sex with her, then tried to have sex with the horse, then killed the girl and the horse…
????
As I said, I don’t remember it exactly. But if I am wrong, wouldn’t that story (above) be a great play?
Edit: All I really remember is how totally homoerotic everything is. The main character is like, TOTALLY GAY for horses.
Geronimo, we have VERY similar tastes in men we’d like to see naked on a horse. *raises glass to hot nekkid men*
Snowblood – Equus is an intense play, but it’s beautifully written. I’ve seen it performed a few times, with mixed results, but in the hands of a good director and a good cast, it will blow you away. It’s less about f***ing horses than about how fragile connections are between people. The first time I saw it stuck with me for a looooooong time.
Damn, Daniel is kinda fine. I feel dirty now.
Oh, thanks for this explanation, Chamalla! *also raises glass to Geronimo’s impeccable naked-men taste*
The people living in NYC are stoked they have the opportunity to see this on Broadway. I should read the play; I love great writing, being a writer myself, and am always excited to hear about something new, or new to ME, which is potentially a work of literary art.