Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince got another release date change, but don’t worry, we won’t have to wait another seven months…

It was set to open on Friday, July 17th.  It’s now been bumped up two days, to Wednesday, July 15th.

A Wednesday opening is usually a good move, business-wise…you get massive numbers on opening day and then the momentum is able to keep rolling through the weekend.  Then articles can tout your five-day opening gross of more than $100 million.

It also means it’s harder to compare to movies that only open during the traditional Fri-Sun three-day weekend.  That’s usually a good thing, since most movies would be foolish to expect to break The Dark Knight’s absurdly gigantic three-day opening-weekend record of $155 million, and therefore wouldn’t look as good in comparison.

Order of the Phoenix opened on a Wednesday in 2007 and ended up grossing a massive $140 million over five days.  With two years worth of inflation and the box office still going strong in the economic slump, expect Half-Blood Prince to hit $150 million.