In Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth installment in the blockbuster Harry Potter franchise based on the beloved novels by J.K. Rowling, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) gains possession of a book of potions that once belonged to the mysterious
Half-Blood Prince. The book’s multitude of personal notations gives him an edge in class experiments, but it also reaches much deeper and darker.

Harry actually has no idea who the Half-Blood Prince is. All he knows is he was the previous owner of an old textbook, which Harry inherited when he enrolled in Professor Slughorn’s Potions class.

Director David Yates offers, “The book says it is the ‘Property of the Half-Blood Prince,’ but there is no name and no other record of him, so his identity is an enigma. But whoever he was, he was obviously very smart; he was capable of taking the conventional recipes for certain potions and spells and making them significantly better. He was an original thinker but also quite a dark thinker. The things he came up with eventually lead Harry into some very intense territory.”

Handwritten along the margins of the Advanced Potion Making textbook, the notes from the Half-Blood Prince help make Harry even more of a star in Slughorn’s (Jim Broadbent) class, which plays perfectly into the plans of Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). He knew the Potions professor
would try to “collect” Harry and bluntly tells Harry to let him. Gambon explains, “Dumbledore knows Slughorn is hiding some important information about the young Tom Riddle, but he needs Harry to get him to reveal it.”

Dumbledore believes that the key to Lord Voldemort’s defeat lies in his past; therefore he has been gathering any memories he can of Tom Riddle, trying to glean when and how Riddle gained the knowledge that enabled him to become, as he says, “the most dangerous Dark Wizard of all time.” Each memory he procures is carefully labeled and stored in a glass vial, including his own earliest recollections. Taking one out, he pours the contents into a floating Pensieve and shows Harry his first memory of Tom Riddle as a mere child.

“This represents a real progression for Harry as a character,” Yates observes. “Harry is fighting a war so when Dumbledore tells him that, with this memory, they could defeat Voldemort, that’s all he needs to know. Killing Voldemort is what primarily drives Harry, so Slughorn becomes just a means to an end. It is a definite departure to see Harry Potter working this guy to get what he wants.”

The objective to find and, hopefully, destroy the source of Voldemort’s immortality and power sends Harry and Dumbledore on a perilous journey to an isolated cave set deep within a windswept cliff.
Within the recesses of the cave, Harry and Dumbledore face terrible dangers as, for the first time, Harry is forced by Dumbledore to take control. Radcliffe states, “When Dumbledore takes Harry on this mission, it is sort of a rite of passage. He is initiating Harry into what he is ultimately going to have to do. This is the beginning of the story of defeating Voldemort, and Harry would never shirk that responsibility.”

And, whether or not they succeed, new and even more terrible threats await them at Hogwarts.

Producer David Heyman reflects, “There is a line in the film where Dumbledore says, ‘Once again, I must ask too much of you, Harry.’ Does he feel guilt? I don’t know if he feels guilt, but he knows that Harry is growing up, and I think this is all part of the education of Harry Potter. Dumbledore knows that ultimately Harry is going to be the one who has to face Voldemort, and in introducing him to Slughorn and exposing him to some of Voldemort’s history and taking him on the journey that he does, he is preparing Harry for the final battle that lies ahead.”

Opening across the Philippines on July 16, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Entertainment Company.