Radcliffe's 'naked horse play' blamed for 'Harry Potter' delay

14 Sep, 2008 10:07 PM7 mins to read

The delayed release of 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' has angered fans wordwide. Photo / AP

Rumour has it that Warner Bros. decided to push back the release of

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

because of

Daniel Radcliffe

's flesh-flashing in the Broadway production of

Equus

Fox News

has presented the theory that Warner execs decided to

move the film's release

from November to July 2009 due to Radcliffe being buck-naked in the play.

You see, had they stuck to the film's original release date (November 21), Radcliffe would have been slap-bang in the middle of the play.

And as Fox so eloquently puts it, "That's not the image Warner Bros. wants associated with bespectacled Harry, who remains chaste and virginal."

I see their point: The salacious play's bestiality theme, together with Potter's privates is a fry cry from the innocent, wizarding world of Hogwarts.

Then there's the

LA Times' theory

that the shift in the film's release date is all about

mullah

The newspaper's columnist Geoff Boucher describes Fox's theory as "flimsy".

We all know that Radcliffe has already starred in the play last year in London, amid mucho media attention. Warner Bros. didn't seem to mind the hysteria back then. So why would they kick up a stink now? The truth is out there...

The LA Times' editorial adds: "Warner Bros. executives believe that a dominant summer blockbuster is better than a dominant fall blockbuster, especially when their target "Potter" audience has so many young people who are far more likely to be repeat consumers for a film released during the summer school break."

Publicity shots

for the saucy play have hit the streets of New York, and fans are lapping up the imagery of Radcliffe with a horse's head superimposed on his naked torso.

Then there's the shot (Safe For Work) of Radcliffe

riding a horse bareback

in the latest issue of

Vogue

magazine. The images were taken by

Annie Leibovitz

- the same snapper who shot

Miley Cyrus

for

Vanity Fair

earlier this year.

They make for very powerful imagery. There's nothing dirty or debauched about them - they're simply in context with what they're promoting. But if anything's gonna send the Warner Bros. execs reeling, it's probably the thought that the heavy publicity for

Equus

could potentially damage the next Potter film.

"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," adds the Fox News article.

Warner Bros. told The Associated Press last week that the decision to delay the film's release was "made to take advantage of an open weekend in Hollywood's busy summer season," said Alan Horn, Warner Bros. president and chief operating officer.

"The picture is completely, absolutely, 100 per cent on schedule, on time. There were no delays," he added.

But that doesn't help the millions of disappointed Harry Potter fans who now have to wait eight months for the next installment in the saga.

There will be Half-Blood

Hours after the announcement was made about the film's delay, Potter fans were incensed and took to the internet to vent their rage.

Thirty five thousand disgruntled fans have so far signed a petition on

Petitionspot.com

, demanding that the film be returned to its original November 21 release.

Other fans have swamped Potter forums with thousands of angry comments, saying they plan to organise boycotts and protests.

While one incensed fan wrote in a letter to the

LA Times

: "This is ridiculous and I assure you that the millions of Harry Potter fans who have been looking forward to this release will not stand for it."

What do you think of the film's delayed release date? Are you disappointed? Submit a comment below.

Disenchanted or not, for now at least, you'll have to make do with the trailer that was unveiled a couple of weeks ago:

Madonna leaks...

...and out pops this song from way back in 2001.

The song's called

Like An Angel Passing Through My Room

, a cover of an old

ABBA

track, produced by

William Orbit

during the early production stages of her 2001

Music

album.

He speaks

John Mayer

is rumoured to have broken the news of his

split from Jennifer Aniston

while carting his sweaty carcass from a gym. That's classy.

He said: "There's no lying, there's no cheating, there's no nothing."

There's apparently no bad Joo Joo between the former lovers.

"Jennifer Aniston is the smartest, most sophisticated person I think I have ever met."

Rumour has it that he's letting on to the press that he was the one that instigated the split. In truth, it was actually Aniston who pulled the plug, according to her rep.

Meanwhile, Mayer has let on that is was

"bad chemistry"

that forced the two apart.

This is all post-breakup ego talking here.

Big-fat fake?

Some blokes from California claim they've found the legendary

Bigfoot

- his corpse at least.

The lucky hunters held a press conference at the tail end of last week to answer probing press questions about the 'discovery'.

Here's a

picture of the creature

they claim to have stumbled upon, deep, deep in the woods.

On a blog roll

Comedian

Roseanne Bar

is blogging again...prolifically. She just posted this gem on her slice of cyberspace devoted to random verbal diarrhea:

"jon voight is a frightened little girl in a pink ballet tutu, who acts like Obama just wandered in from the rain forest with a bone thru his nose and a communist pamphlet in his loincloth. The neocons who own jon voight and make him dance on the chabad telethons are the worst most elitist people on earth. glen beck and jon voight are their bitches... both of them are used tampons who must be flushed down the toilet immediately! jon voight your evil spawn angelina jolie and her vacuous hubby brad pitt make about forty million dollars a year in violent psychopathic movies and give away three of it to starving children trying to look as if they give a crap about humanity as they spit out more dunces that will consume more than their fair share and wreck the earth even more. (just sayin')."

Umkay then...

Quote of the day

"I don't believe in God, I believe in Al Pacino, and that's true. If I ever get a phone call saying, 'Would you like to work with Pacino?,' I would go crazy."

- Yummy Javier Bardem (aka Penelope Cruz's man on tap)

Man behaving badly

Catch this video of

Sir Paul McCartney

behaving badly.

A young lady with a video camera films the singer as he tottered about London town. Macca was not amused...

Watch a video of Macca's tirade

here

I think the "fatty" remark was uncalled for. Macca's such an overgrown schoolboy.

Character building

Wise woman

Anne Hathaway