I was just browsing around Amazon, when I noticed that The Lion King (1994) still hasn’t been released. Other Disney movies (just as popular) are out on video, and what is more puzzling, movies that were genuine hydrogen sulfide stink bombs in the theater are being released in droves as if the studio expects to suddenly start raking in piles of money.
Examples currently on Amazon’s “furture best sellers” list (get ready to hold your nose!):
Movie Gross Net After Budget
• All the Pretty Horses ~$16M -$29M
• Big Trouble in Little China ~$11M (budget unknown, safe
to say it fell a little short.)
• Vertical Limit ~$68M -$7M
• Nurse Betty ~$25M +$1M
• The Legend of Bagger Vance ~$30M -$30M
• Bounce ~$37M +$1.8M
• Little Nicky ~$39M -$40M
• Lucky Numbers ~$10M -$55M!
• Zardoz (Box office numbers not available, but if you've ever seen
this snoozer, you'd be scratching your head about its release on video.
Now compare that to The Lion King, which grossed almost $313 million in the USA and over $770 million world wide. The studios are trying to make money, right? Why are they releasing all of these bombs and holding back on the real money makers? And what in the hell makes Amazon think that Lucky Numbers (short of its budget by 55 million dollars) is going to be a furure best seller??
[sub]The general question is the second to the last sentence, in case you missed it.[/sub]
you know, i’m almost postitive that lion king is out on video, or rather, WAS. disney has a nasty habit of putting videos on what they call a moritorium (sp?). they’ll put it out for 6 mos or a year, and then stop making them. then a few years later, they’ll do it again. that way, they get a rush of expectant mothers and soccer moms to buy the videos so they can have a cheap babysitter.
however, lately pretty much ALL movie companies have been coming out with the video releases a few months after the DVD. why? well, to sell more dvd players, idiot!
Disney often keeps their movies- at least the animated features- on limited release. If you search further on the amazon.com site, you’ll see that the VHS version is no longer available. I know it was in the past (my sister has a copy); when it is re-released, it will probably be available on both VHS and DVD (and undoubtedly as a Collectors’ Edition).
To answer your second question, it’s hard to say what a box-office bomb is going to do in video. Fight Club, for example, lost $26 million. Granted, it may not be a fair comparison, but the uncertainty remains… Little Nicky will likely sell several million copies just because it is an Adam Sandler movie- lots of adolescent consumers out there with disposable income.
First, I think you’re misinterpreting the term “future best-seller”. Amazon isn’t trying to predict the future. They’re just ranking the best-sellers of DVD’s that haven’t been released yet, AKA pre-orders. So the poor taste shown represents the people, not Amazon.
As far as why some movies haven’t been released, some studios are just annoying that way. But they have their reasons. They figure that they will sell the most copies of a blockbuster videos upon it’s initial release. They also assume that the DVD market is still growing. So if they wait until there is a bigger market, they will sell more copies. Money talks.
Other startling examples of unreleased DVD’s: the Star Wars trilogy, Back to the Future, ET, Forrest Gump, Godfather trilogy, Indiana Jones trilogy.
What? Indiana not released yet? Hmmm… I got my copies at the local video rental store- they were selling off all their old movies that weren’t bringing in much rental business. Gives me an idea…
Duds make it to video immediately because they bomb at the box office. In order to make the shortfall, they go to video immediately to get license fees, etc.
In contrast if the movie makes oodles of money there is no incentive for them to go video so soon. They’d rather people see the movie repeatedly at the theatres. They make more money that way.
I seldom go the the theatre but I can guage whether the movie is a good one by seeing how soon it goes to video. The longer it takes, the better the movie is.
Another reason some movies take forever to come out on video: so the movie studios can screw the video rental places. Seriously.
Ever wonder why it costs so frickin’ much to rent a new release? It’s simple. On titles that the studios think will do well in the rental market, they’ll delay the “official” release of the video edition to the public for several months. Meanwhile, the movie’s still available for purchase, just not at a price that any sane person would want to pay - often well in excess of $100/copy.
The video chain stores, however, which have locked themselves into “Guaranteed in stock or it’s free!” slogans to lure in customers, and so are forced to shoot themselves in the foot and buy 20, 50, or more copies at the insane-o price. Only then, once the studios have exhausted the niche market of ‘video stores willing to pay a mint’, will they drop the price and “officially” release the video to the public. Meanwhile the video stores have to recoup their cost somehow, and so they pass it onto schmucks like us in the form of high “new release” rental fees.
An example of this going on right now: according to Blockbuster’s web site, the movie U-571 is not due out on video for another two months or so (May 15, to be exact).
However, if the reader surfs over to Amazon.com (I don’t think a direct link will work work, so search for “U-571” and select the first result under Video - not DVD), he or she will note that U-571 is already for sale…for $106.99. As Amazon explains:
Not entirely true. I used to work for the 2nd largest video chain in the nation, and we had a deal to do profit sharing with the major motion picture companies. We would give them a portion of the profits from rental if they would lower the price of the movies for us. It is also interesting to note that it was written in out contract that we had the same deal as Blockbuster. We had a big spat with both Paramount and 20th century Fox, and had barely any copies of movies from these two companies for upwards of a year.
The revenue-sharing arrangement is currently the subject of a lawsuit. Independent video-store operators accuse the big chains of collusion with the studios in price-setting, among other things. Details:
