Glenn Reynolds recently mused about how quickly Team America: World Police came out on DVD. A reader retorted that Team America's "theatre-to-DVD gestation actually was average-to-slow," in that it took about seven months – as opposed to, say, Michael Keaton's thriller "White Noise," which opened in January and hit DVD bins near you this week.
Reynolds asked whether it didn't once take films more than a year to show up on DVD (you know, after they milked all the theatrical box office they could out of the thing). Given that DVDs now account for some 60% of revenues, studios have been shortening the timeframe, especially for things that don't involve a "special cut" like The Lord of the Rings. But they're still not where Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, would like to be. The former owner of Broadcast.com, who currently owns a bunch of theaters and is planning his own entertainment empire, said in an interview in Wired magazine last year that he'd like to see DVDs of a film released the same day as the theatrical opening: why not be able to buy a copy on the way out of the theater if you really liked it?
Anyway, I decided to conduct a little experiment with the subject of this review, the Ethan Hawke/Lawrence Fishburne action flick Assault on Precinct 13. I remember the trailers for it and honestly barely recall it ever being in theaters at all – it seemed like it slipped through without a trace. When I learned it was coming out on DVD, I was immediately reminded of the trailer's images of a derelict police precinct under assault, Fishburne in his role as another character who wears shades, even at night, and lots of explosions. Hey, what can I say: I like it when things blow up.
So, to begin with the experiment, which has as its hypothesis this notion: that studios will probably release the DVD of a film that didn't do boffo box office quickly in order to tie the DVD release more closely to the original advertising. That makes me wonder how fast this film moved from theaters to DVD.
Well, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, the film was originally released on January 19, 2005. It had a production budget of about $30 million, grossed $6.5 million its opening weekend, and made $20 million domestically and $33 million worldwide in its theatrical run. The film's four month jump from opening weekend to DVD shelves does seem fast, but it is undoubtedly connected to the fact that the studio wanted to capitalize on the initial advertising blitz as much as possible. In other words, they spent a bunch of money on advertising a film that maybe broke even so far, and they don't want to waste a bunch of money on new advertising. They get it on store shelves fast, before people forget about the trailers, and maybe they make a bit more money. Ultimately, I think that's the sort of thing that drives the theater to DVD timeframe: how and where the studio is likely to make its money.
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