'Potter' book set for June 21

Rowling's fifth installment to hit U.S., Blighty, Canada, Oz simultaneously

By JONATHAN BING

Rowling

HOLLYWOOD -- Booksellers, depressed by flagging holiday sales, are clearing space for the biggest publishing blockbuster of the summer.

After months of delays, J.K. Rowling's publishers, Scholastic and Bloomsbury, have staked out a June 21 release date for "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the fifth installment in a series of books that has sold approximately 60 million copies around the world.

Rowling has been tinkering with the manuscript of "Phoenix" for months, and it's grown to "Moby Dick"-scale proportions. The book is 255,000 words, more than a third longer than the previous doorstop, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

It will be published simultaneously in the U.S., Britain, Canada and Australia.

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," the next feature film in the Warner Bros. franchise, is expected to arrive in theaters in summer 2004.