The newest film in the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, has pushed back its debut from Nov. 21, 2008 to July 17, 2009. The film features Daniel Radcliffe as the young and talented wizard, Harry Potter. Now rumors are circulating that the movie was bumped back more than 6 months because of Radcliffe’s involvement in a production of the play Equus, in which he appears naked and even has sexual fantasies about horses. The rumor is that Warner Bros. didn’t want their star answering questions about wizards and sexual horseplay (pun intended) in the same interview. FoxNews’s showbiz blogger Roger Friedman has suggested a rather preposterous theory:

“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 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.”

Of course, this ignores the fact that Radcliffle was in this play last year amid intense media scrutiny and general celebration for his courage and versatility. Radcliffle earned good marks from critics and recieved a lot of extra attention for his other acting performances, a fact that I can assure you Warner Brothers didn’t overlook. The Los Angeles Times’ Geoff Boucher had this to say:

This movie is being pushed back for one reason and one reason alone: money.

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. After watching “The Dark Knight” surge to historic heights this summer with a mid-July release, the Warner Bros. brain trust decided, hey, let’s do that again next year.

This obviously makes more sense, and has been corroborated by the studio executives. But rumors do swirl quickly,don’t they? Radcliffle could use some “Celebrity Reputation Management” right about now to combat nasty rumors like this.