With summer around the corner and new Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince marketing material coming out seemingly every day, I figure it might be a good time to look at the summer season and see what kind of competition the movie will have at the box office when it comes out.

Warner Bros. hasn’t made the same mistake that Disney made when they released The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian in May last year — whenever Harry has opened in the summer, it’s been in June or July, when kids and teenagers are safely out of school already.  This year, Half-Blood Prince opens on July 17th.

That has the added benefit of making it pretty much the only major blockbuster to come out after the Fourth of July weekend.  On July 1st, Public Enemies and the third Ice Age are released, and the week before that, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen comes out.  And May and June get heavyweights like Wolverine, Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, and Land of the Lost out of the way.

In other words, it’s a pretty clear road for Half-Blood Prince.  The week before it opens, only Bruno — Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest — and the high school sex comedy I Love You, Beth Cooper come out, and it shares its opening day only with 500 Days of Summer, an indie romantic comedy.

The week after, G-Force is the only kids movie that could steal money away, and it’s about animated gerbils.  After that, there are only a few high-profile movies left — Judd Apatow’s Funny People, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds — none of which will reach even close to Potter’s heights.

Keep in mind that this is all subject to change: release dates can be notoriously slippery.  But as of now, Half-Blood Prince is probably the best-positioned summer movie out there right now thanks to its lack of competition and well-placed release date.

Order of the Phoenix grossed $290 million nationwide when it opened two years ago, although Potter hype was sky-high thanks to the book release of Deathly Hallows.  Has it died down since then?  I doubt it.  In fact, I think Half-Blood Prince has the potential to become the first $300 million grosser of the franchise since 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.