The Associated Press reports that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth installment of the blockuster films based on the novels by J.K. Rowling, has been pushed from its Nov. 21 release date to July 17, 2009.

The report continues by saying that Warner Bros.’s decided to release the film in the summer in order to take advantage of “an open weekend” in Hollywood’s busy summer release schedule. The studio hopes that a summer release will be good for box office sales; the franchise’s second-highest grossing film—the fifth film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—was released in the summer of 2007.

“The picture is completely, absolutely, 100 percent on schedule, on time. There were no delays,” Warner Bros. president and CEO Alan Horn told The AP. “I’ve seen the movie. It is fabulous. We would have been perfectly able to have it out in November.”

The report adds that the good news for fans is that the new release schedule will shorten fans’s wait between the Half-Blood Prince and the final two films (both of which are based on the final novel in the series).

The film finds Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) returning to his classes with an assignment to uncover the secrets of the early years of his nemesis, the dark Lord Voldemort.