Fans lap up new Harry Potter film trailer

The new trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, the long-awaited sixth instalment of JK Rowling's wizard series, came out today. The glimpse of the film, which UK audiences will be able to see from July 17, shows Potter (played by Daniel Radcliffe) as he prepares for a final showdown with his evil nemesis, Lord Voldemort.

The trailer features plenty of menace from the Death Eaters, the Dark Lord's black, cloudy emissaries, who - in one scene which wasn't in the original book - fly to London and wreak havoc on Trafalgar Square and the Millennium Bridge. The trailer also hints at the growing involvement of Draco Malfoy, Potter's creepy white-haired Hogwarts rival, in Voldemort's plans. There is, as usual, the obligatory game of Quidditch.

On a lighter note, clips also show the trio of Potter, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) all finding romance. Indeed, a major criticism from the test audiences who saw previews of British director David Yates's film was that there was too much romance.

Also released today - don't read on if you haven't read the book - was the news that Radcliffe, Grint and Watson will play adult versions of themselves in the final film, part two of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for an epilogue which takes place 19 years later. Whether or not this works – the producers could have chosen to cast older actors instead – is something that Potter fans will have to wait until July 2011 to find out.