Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Timeframes on DVD releases

This is topic Timeframes on DVD releases in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 06-15-2005, 02:13 PM:

Here are a couple. If the trend continues, it may eventually be a couple of weeks after wide theatrical release when it is released on DVD. Just the right amount of time for the studios to collect the majority of the box receipts. Man, that will keep the people away, unless they REALLY have to see it.

Be Cool - In Theatres - 03/04/05 DVD 06/07/05 - ~90 Days
Beyond the Sea - In T - 12/29/04 DVD 06/07/05 - ~180 days
Hitch - In Theatres - 02/11/05 DVD 06/14/05 - ~120 days

Posted by Eric Hooper (Member # 1730) on 06-15-2005, 03:15 PM:

Don't get me started.... [Mad]

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 06-16-2005, 01:57 AM:

Hopefully it'll give more places a reason to do film right. Video done right beats film done WRONG!

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-16-2005, 07:22 PM:

"Be Cool" sucked ass. So its no surprise why its hitting home video so early. The studio has to try to squeeze whatever it can out of that venture to avoid as many interest payments as possible on the financing of that turd.

Still, there is a very direct correlation between the much shortened window of theatrical to DVD release and the downturn in attendance at the theatrical box office. Sure, part of the problem is the shit quality of many films (some actually being videos) these days. It is a fact a lot of people are content to wait a mere season to watch a movie on DVD and save lots of money in the process.

Movie studios would get larger levels of attendance at the box office if they would bother to let movies play out their useful lifespan at the theaters properly. They need to stop making 7500 prints for a major release and they need to wait at least 8 months to a full year before the movie appears on DVD.

One of the things that got this bullshit of shortened windows started is all the marketing of "summer movies" being released on DVD. A few years ago, a major summer release didn't appear on DVD until spring of the following year. Now everyone can count on a June theatrical release having a November or December DVD release -if it doesn't hit store shelves sooner than that. Gotta to be there in time for the Holiday Shopping Season, which seems to start earlier and earlier every year. Halloween has been kicking it off lately (instead of Thanksgiving). In a couple more years you'll start seeing Christmas decorations the day after Labor Day.

When the big pictures adopted short release windows, that put a ton of pressure on "lesser pictures" to go to even shorter windows. Recouping all that borrowed investment money (most movies are made with borrowed money) is priority one. Make it all back as fast as possible to lessen those interest payments to the lowest extreme possible. Some executives need to do this just to keep their jobs.

Amerian business culture is currently all about the stock holder and everything else can get fucked. Product quality, employee morale, 5 year plans....all bullshit. They don't mean anything. Just do everything humanly possible to make the books look improved for the next quarterly report. It doesn't matter if you sell your best friend's wife into slavery to do it.

This short sighted business model will be the thing that eventually ruins the dominance American companies have on the worldwide film industry, and business worldwide in general.

Posted by Robert Harrison (Member # 3202) on 06-18-2005, 04:54 PM:

Does anyone remember 20th-Fox putting out "9 To 5" on video three months after its Christmas release in theatres? And how about "The Pirates of Penzance," which was DAY AND DATE. Hardly any theatres played that one in protest. In the 1980s, the place I work at was a single screen, 1400 seat neighborhood house. We could routinely play movies that were six months old for $1.50 per person and regularly attract 500 people on Fridays and 1000 people on Saturdays. Now, we are what is called mid-run in the Chicago market. We opened "The Longest Yard" last night after only three weeks of its nationalopening and drew 60 people! We are starting to get first-run films, though. Through some miracle, we picked up "Revenge of the Sith," but it's playing at so many other theatres, that, even with our reduced admission of $6, we could only draw 714 people for the first Saturday total. We also got "Cinderella Man," but audiences weren't as big on that as they were "A Beautiful Mind." Next week, we'll see what happens with "Bewitched." I love my DVDs, but I could wait a while longer to buy them. There's always catalog titles, too. But, to quote an old King Crimson song, "I talk to the wind, but the wind does not hear."

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-18-2005, 08:08 PM:

I can't confirm the video release date on "9 to 5." Even if it were released to VHS, Beta or SelectaVision disc only three months after its theatrical premiere the video release still wouldn't have done much damage to the theatrical run. Not all that many people had videotape players in 1980. It was a pretty rare thing.

Of course the situation today is very different. Nearly 100 million stand alone DVD players have been sold in the United States since the format's debut in 1997. That figure doesn't count many millions of DVD-ROM computer drives and DVD-capable gaming consoles (PS2 and X-Box). Most homes have a VCR still in service as well.

Some polls are showing people prefer to watch movies in their homes. Money's the real factor. It costs quite a bit more for a family to visit the theater than it does to rent a DVD and buy some snacks from the grocery store. I still think most people would prefer to see a movie in a good movie theater. But the combination of short video release windows and sophisticated home video setups have made watching movies at home a more attractive option.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 06-18-2005, 10:26 PM:

quote: Robert Harrison
Does anyone remember 20th-Fox putting out "9 To 5" on video three months after its Christmas release in theatres?

I rather doubt this, since much was made of Paramount releasing FLASHDANCE to video in 1984 after a 'mere' six months after opening and with the picture still playing. After much fear, however, the theatrical boxoffice actually got a bump the week of video release, since they benefited from the new ad campaign for the video. Of course, there wasn't much saturatiopn of VCR's yet.

quote: Robert Harrison
And how about "The Pirates of Penzance," which was DAY AND DATE.

It needs to be clarified that PENZANCE was not released on home video day-and-date; only that it played a one-time "pay-per-view" premium cable the night of the theatrical debut. Very few theatre chains booked it under these circumstances. Universal tried to claim that their plan all along was only to open in art houses, but belied the fact that it was originally planned as a major Christmas 70mm release until it got held back to do the theatrical-pay-per-view thing.

Posted by Robert Harrison (Member # 3202) on 06-19-2005, 03:50 PM:

Thanks for that clarification, Paul, regarding "Penzance". I bow to your superior Jedi memory. Also, it is possible that I just remember reading that Fox was CONSIDERING releasing "9 To 5" to video so quickly. Anyone else out there remember this?

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 06-19-2005, 04:44 PM:

Yes, I remember the days when if my family wanted to watch a movie at home we had to rent the VCR along with the tape. Now between myself and my two roomates we have 3 DVD players, 2 VCR's, 3 DVD capable gaming consoles, and two DVD ROM drives.

In 1989 'Batman' made $251 million. Its production budget was $35 million. So far 'Batman Begins' has made $71 million. Its budget was $150 million. If attendance at my theatre was any indication I'd be surprised if 'Batman Begins' will break even, especially considering the raw box office numbers don't take into account the share the theatres do get.

People are always talking doom and gloom about the theatre idnustry, but there is more truth to the 'sky is falling' attitude than some of us like to admit. Sure, 2003's attendance was the highest since 1959, but in 1959 there were 177,000,000 Americans, in 2003 there were 258,000,000.

Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 06-20-2005, 12:13 AM:

Surviving Christmas with Affleck and Gandolfini has already made it to HBO. THen again, no surprise there

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 06-21-2005, 06:20 PM:

I remember when if you wanted to by a VHS tape in the early days it cost you around a $100 bucks. The big issue is that there are so many screens that these films play on everyone sees them in the first few weeks and there is no reason to keep them around. Therefor the shrinking video release windows.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-21-2005, 07:24 PM:

I can confirm that "9 to 5" did NOT come out on video in 90 days. I was in the biz then, back in the days when we had to wait months for the new releases. We played that movie about 4 months after the break. (I'll edit the exact date in here later when I'm at the theatre.) It was not out on video when we played it -- we wouldn't have played it if it was.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 06-21-2005, 07:40 PM:

What about that one Ben Assflex movie? It was a Christmas movie with Robert DeNiro (although Robert DeNiro is in every movie) and the DVD still came out before that same Christmas! I can't remember what the movie was called.

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 06-21-2005, 08:51 PM:

The CBS Evening News ran this story last night. An interesting quoted stat:

quote:
Batman was powerful enough to rule the box office, but the superhero was unable to pull Hollywood out of its worst slump in 20 years.

"Batman Begins" debuted as the top movie with $46.9 million, while overall movie revenues skidded for the 17th straight weekend, tying a slide in 1985 that had been the longest box-office decline since analysts began keeping detailed records on movie grosses.

Full story and video clip here.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 06-21-2005, 09:45 PM:

quote:
The CBS Evening News ran this story last night. An interesting quoted stat:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Batman was powerful enough to rule the box office, but the superhero was unable to pull Hollywood out of its worst slump in 20 years.

"Batman Begins" debuted as the top movie with $46.9 million, while overall movie revenues skidded for the 17th straight weekend, tying a slide in 1985 that had been the longest box-office decline since analysts began keeping detailed records on movie grosses.

The media keeps making a huge deal about this box office slide. If I'm not mistaken, it's year on year for the arbitrarily chosen top 12 films. Since they use the top 12, a few bombs early in the year will trickle effect weeks and weeks of data until enough movies don't bomb to fill the pipeline with a top 12 that is decent.

I'm willing to bet that when the DVD's start coming out for this slump, those DVD's will not sell or rent as well as the DVD's that resulted from the same release period last year. The news won't report about it because the immenent demise of the theatre industry is a much better story.

I'm not so sure that increasing the DVD release window will necessarily increase theatrical gross. The problem is with the 10 zillion prints that are released so that everybody that has any desire to see the movie will do it within a month. If you want to see the grosses go up real fast, make the terms so that the studios benefit from the movies having legs. If the studio take increases instead of decreases as time goes on, you will see a lot more marketing like the famous Lion King, "If you've only seen it once, you haven't seen it all."

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-21-2005, 11:19 PM:

The news/entertainment media is party at fault for the short shelf life of movies. They've helped play up the bullshit hype on opening weekend numbers. The movie studios need all that opening weekend earnings hype because total earnings figures at the box office mean very little to most people anymore.

$100 million: who cares? $200 million: routine. $300 million: getting to be routine. The figures don't mean shit when a forgettable sequel like "Shrek 2" can jump into the top 5 money makers of all time list -and be hyped as "the greatest comedy of all time." Yeah. Bullshit.

Opening weekend hype has taken over. And it's bad to the point we're hearing news personalities on a Monday morning say, "the biggest opening ever for the second weekend in April!"

It gets worse.

Lately the hype has really been shifting to daily gross figures. With our short attention spans, we can't patiently wait until Monday morning to find out who reigned supreme over the box office (even though the press projects this figure now early Sunday). Some weekends don't begin before news people are projecting how a film will do based on its Wednesday opening numbers.

Some of this absurdity can be tempered if Hollywood would just do the sensible thing and report actual attendance figures. They need to count the actual number of tickets sold. How many asses were planted in those seats?

It can now take as little as 10 million tickets, or even less, for a film to hit the $100 million mark. However, if a movie sold 50 million tickets, that would be an honest hit regardless of the era in which it was released. Has any movie ever crossed the 100 million tickets sold mark?

I think counting actual tickets sold as a measure of success would put more pressure on a movie to do well for a sustained period in theaters. I think it is easier for people to remember a figure like 25 million tickets sold than a gross of $237 million. Actual units sold tranlates to that many people experiencing the show. It's a more humanized statistic.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-22-2005, 12:57 AM:

quote: Lyle Romer
I'm willing to bet that when the DVD's start coming out for this slump, those DVD's will not sell or rent as well as the DVD's that resulted from the same release period last year.

That's already happening. DVD sales from April were down 7% compared to April of last year. A similar drop was expected in May. (This is from a NATO bulletin.)

Could DVD be peaking? I know I've pretty much reached the end of my list of old movies I want to own, and I haven't seen a new movie in a long time that I've wanted to see more than once. "Finding Nemo" and "School of Rock" are the two newest movie titles I own. I probably have more disks of "classic TV" than I do of movies.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 06-22-2005, 10:46 AM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
I know I've pretty much reached the end of my list of old movies I want to own, and I haven't seen a new movie in a long time that I've wanted to see more than once. "Finding Nemo" and "School of Rock" are the two newest movie titles I own. I probably have more disks of "classic TV" than I do of movies.

Of course, they can sell you everything again when HD-DVD versions are released!