Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Slumdog on DVD March 31st...

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Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 03-04-2009, 07:06 PM:

It was number one at the box office yesterday, yet in less than 30 days it's on DVD...WTF?

From www.showbizdata.com

Wednesday, March 4 2009

Slumdog Millionaire may have enjoyed its best weekend to date in theaters last weekend -- even after nearly four months in release. And the Academy Award winner's legs are likely to remain steady for several more weeks. That's why analysts were somewhat surprised when Fox announced that Slumdog, whose Oscar wins included best picture, director (Danny Boyle), and adapted screenplay (Simon Beaufoy), would be released on DVD and Blu-ray disc on March 31 -- just four weeks from now. The Blu-ray version, it said, will include a bonus music video. The A.R. Rahman soundtrack won Oscars for best original score and best original song.

source

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 03-04-2009, 07:40 PM:

It's still #1 at the box office today [Wink]

The thing is, slumdog was one of those films that "moved around" for quite a while, so the video distributor is not going to wait any longer.

Officially opened in USA Jan 23, I think (Jan 9 in the UK). It's just that it took forever to reach the top possitions at the BO.

But yeah, less than 3 months window.

Obviously owners make more $$$ selling the DVD that showing the movie, but in this case I particularly would probably wait an extra week for the blu-ray and yet another week after that for the DVD. [Wink]

Don't want to wait too long after the Oscar buzz, though.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 03-04-2009, 07:48 PM:

Horribly short window, but this reeks of Fox wanting to take advantage of the Oscar buzz before it dies down.

I also wonder if it's an attempt to head off some of the bootleg sales. I've heard there is a high quality bootleg of Slumdog out there.

Posted by Anslem Rayburn (Member # 1267) on 03-05-2009, 02:48 AM:

quote: Julio Roberto
Officially opened in USA Jan 23, I think (Jan 9 in the UK).

It opened November 14, but didn't get a decent expansion until December 19. It went wide on January 23, but had already grossed 45 million by then.

I guess it depends on what you consider "opened" to mean.

Posted by Edwin Schwing (Member # 1270) on 03-05-2009, 03:15 AM:

It wouldn't have been able to receive ANY oscars if it had opened in January!

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 03-05-2009, 08:55 AM:

Right. By "I thought officially opened" I meant I thought it went "wide" on the 23rd.

I wasn't counting a couple of festivals and limited as to make it eligible for awards towards the DVD release window.

Otherwise, it's an extreamly generous one [Wink]

When you guys say a movie "opened" ... are you also counting the festivals it may be shown in a month or two before "true release"? If so, should I just use "opened wide" to refer to the date people in the US can actually see it in theaters regularly? Or is there a more appropiate term in US-english?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-05-2009, 09:37 AM:

"Open" can mean anything from the first day it's shown in public to the first day it's shown in a particular cinema. So you just need to use some kind of an explanatory term when you are talking about a movie opening. For example, we are opening Hotel for Dogs on Friday, but it opened nationwide in January.

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 03-05-2009, 10:40 AM:

Fox Searchlight was testing the waters on this release back in November after they picked it up at Toronto. They almost released it straight to the DVD market without giving it a theatrical release. That is the reason for the limited release late last year.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 03-05-2009, 12:16 PM:

I ran the first US showing of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE at the Telluride Film Festival last August.

There were no film prints available, so we ran 25fps Digital-beta.

Below are pix from the actual set up used at the premiere.

The deck was Sony HDW-D1800. We used direct digital video & audio outputs. Audio was run through an interface (I forget the type) and then into the theater's CP-650.

The Projector was a Panasonic PT-DW1000U

After the show, my boss thought I deserved a big hand.
. . . this is the biggest one they could find! [Big Grin]

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 03-05-2009, 03:43 PM:

quote: Jim Cassedy
The deck was Sony HDW-D1800. We used direct digital video & audio outputs

So much for DCI encryption etc ... [Wink]

This movie, then, has a most generous DVD release window since it "opened" in the USA ... August 2008 through March 2009 [Wink]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 03-05-2009, 04:35 PM:

Why 25fps? That's lame. Todays technology allows for exhibition of true 24fps video formats. Let's get rid of this PAL/NTSC nonsense.

You may think you're special, but I ran the first US showing of Warriors of Virtue!!!

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 03-05-2009, 05:01 PM:

By December 19, Slumdog was in 589 theatres. That's a pretty wide "limited" release. Definitely more than just film festivals.

Posted by Peter Castle (Member # 1997) on 03-05-2009, 05:08 PM:

Here in Australia, it is in week 12 of release, has grossed nearly $A16m (about $US25m), is second in the B.O., and is running on 196 screens.

Most of those screens are digital but not DCI. They are 25fps e-cinema, although I'm sure many projectors are capable of full HD.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-05-2009, 07:00 PM:

Well this'll be a decent test of what the DVD release does to the theatrical revenues providing the movie still performing well at the end of this month.

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 03-05-2009, 07:17 PM:

Well Daily Variety reported today it passed the $200 Million mark worldwide.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 03-05-2009, 07:33 PM:

quote: Peter Castle
although I'm sure many projectors are capable of full HD

Local distributors did not bring in a 2K of Slumdog...we tried. They offered it to us on e-cinema which we declined as we'd have to letterbox the image (yuk).

They ended up running us off a nice new print.

Posted by John Koutsoumis (Member # 1855) on 03-05-2009, 08:57 PM:

If the files are 1920 x 1080 it should look ok on smaller screens. Even if the projector can't display the full resolution, on some occasions i've seen the benefits of having a higher res file than the standard 1280 x 720 on a non 1080p projector. But I agree the letterboxing thing with E-cinema is quite annoying.

Posted by Peter Castle (Member # 1997) on 03-05-2009, 10:19 PM:

Even DCI letterboxes scope. But I agree, scope on e-cinema is not my preference. But if it means screening the title instead of not, then I guess I have to take the e-cinema version. (I don't have the pull to get a 35mm print.) We show in two weeks.

I've experimented with alternatives to just displaying the 16x9 image with black borders, including zooming the image (too bad the distributor logo is not letterboxed) and pre-scaling the image then using an animorphic lens to unscale and generate a fixed height image.

I'm not convinced of either yet - I'll wait til I get the hard drive. Maybe they could supply a copy on Bluray now that its released soon in the US.

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 03-05-2009, 11:45 PM:

I thought they said it was 16x9 cropped. Anyway, even though all other distributors want to give us prints, this particular distributor thinks us unworthy.

Just as John did, we declined the digital copy. But we have to wait till April 9 for the 35mm print. So much for tryying to do the right thing. I should just invite our audience to our home cinema in shifts. At least the digital sound will work on a home copy - that is a gamble with a 15 week old DD track on 35.

The bottom line is: There is so much good product on offer now and Slumdog will not get the season it would have with a decent date. Based on other films I would estimate the difference to be about $15K film hire. Would they make that up from the dvd stores in this region?

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 03-06-2009, 08:27 AM:

quote: Peter Castle
(too bad the distributor logo is not letterboxed

Wait a second.

So you guys down under, when you do e-cinema, you get "prints" (lol, let me rephrase that, digital files, video tapes, digital optical discs, whatever) with a distributor's logo in the image that is seen by the audience, like a TV Network "bug" on the corner of the screens?

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 03-06-2009, 09:00 AM:

Absolutely. We even squash the credits up as soon as the last image starts to fade and and replace them with a house advert to let them know they can get some popcorn to go at the candy bar as well as plug our next attraction.

No. The (in this case) ICON FILM DISTRIBUTION logo that precedes the feature is what is being referred to.

Fox do not have it here...Mr. Gibson does. [thumbsup]

[ 03-06-2009, 07:57 PM: Message edited by: John Wilson ]

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 03-06-2009, 09:13 AM:

Thank goodness.
God save the queen [Wink]

Posted by Paul Gordon (Member # 3320) on 03-06-2009, 10:29 AM:

Fox wouldn't even give us Slumdog in March or April... and now that its coming out on DVD will just pass on it altogether... this is why we are playing more classic rep films and passing on second run altogether...

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-06-2009, 11:36 AM:

We hoped to play Slumdog this week but wound up keeping Gran Torino an extra week, so now we're going to play Slumdog next week (13th). Normally it's against my religion to play something that close to video, but we have nothing else decent to drop into the schedule. (Too soon for Watchmen)

If for some reason that booking falls thru we'll probably skip it.

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 03-06-2009, 07:27 PM:

Aren't the bigger exhibitors a little pissed off about this, let alone second-run and art houses who haven't shown Slumdog yet? We're still doing incredibly well with the film after such a long run and I don't see why this wouldn't be the case in the USA. The UK had this situation where a film got pulled because of a short release window.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 03-06-2009, 08:04 PM:

quote: Julio Roberto
Thank goodness.
God save the queen

How appropriate...it's Mardi Gras here tonight. [Wink]

Posted by Ky Boyd (Member # 23) on 03-07-2009, 12:27 AM:

We opened Slumdog Dec. 5th in Santa Rosa. Week 14 started today and still going strong.

BTW, Slumdog has continually expanded adding runs almost every week or every other week since it began opening theatrically just before Thanksgiving. But Searchlight is selective about theatres and markets it expands into in each stage of its release. That's what helped them build it into the success it is.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 03-07-2009, 01:12 AM:

Ky, do you run the Rialto in Santa Rosa?

I just discovered the Rialto in December and I've driven down to see a few movies. I watched a double feature of Doubt and The Reader, and a double feature of The Wrestler and Revolutionary Road. I saw Doubt/Reader on a Tuesday night and I was blown away by how many people were there. Overall it's a nice operation; I really like the atmosphere.

Posted by Cameron Glendinning (Member # 3516) on 03-07-2009, 04:45 PM:

Slumdog broke records at my cinema, we ran a 35mm film print for the bulk of the season until we cut back the sessions, we sent the film print to another one of our theaters that was running many more sessions than we were. We continued the run with the e cinema file.

quote: Peter Castle
(too bad the distributor logo is not letterboxed)

We use the typical Panasonic projector that atlab supplied, we used the blanking feature so we could letterbox and fill the scope screen, yes the preshow digital slide show looked a bit strange, but the Icon logo (and feature which was already scope) looked good.

Posted by Peter Castle (Member # 1997) on 03-07-2009, 09:32 PM:

Cameron,

I presume using the "blanking feature" just avoids projecting the taller logo on the floor and ceiling. Did you then zoom the lens to fill the scope screen - I am presuming a fixed height screen.
This means only about 78% of the chip is used, and then expanded by the same factor to reduce the brightness of the image to about 60% of its normal widescreen brightness. I'm not sure that this is really bright enough.

We screen in two weeks, and throwing the image to our 50' wide screen concerns us. That's why I've been trying to do some prescaling and use an anamorphic lens to at least cut out one of those 78% drops. My only concern is that the scaling means that the image on the chip has already been "averaged" and won't be as sharp. Maybe just showing it letterboxed (and smaller) would be better.

Any comment?

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 03-08-2009, 06:15 AM:

I have heard a rumor that "the powers that be" (probably someone from NATO) are trying to convince Fox to push that DVD date back so more of the smaller theatres have a chance to play it. Mind you, I did not hear this rumor through any "official" channel, but I have reason to believe it might have merit.

Whether the studio will cave is a whole other question, but from what I understand it's not unprecedented.