Exclusive: Pirates of the Caribbean 2 on DVD & Blu-ray
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(Updated with Pirates 2 cover art and release date). According to a source deep, deep inside the Disney Vault, there’s Captain Jack Sparrow news for us this morning. The biggest hit ever (at least until Spiderman 3 is released), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is heading for a holiday release. Not only as a standard DVD release, but the Buena Vista and Blu-ray consortium is pushing for a Blu-ray edition next year. They need a hit and they know it, so Johnny Depp to the rescue?
Updated Aug 24th: Here’s the cover art for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, to be released on 12/5. The movie will be released in both a single-disc version ($19.95) and two-disc collector’s edition ($24.95 ) - with over 6 hours of bonus material.
Original Post: In pushing a rock uphill, the Blu-ray group had encouraged the House that Walt Built to go same street date. Exclusively in the Blu-ray camp, my Disney Insider confirmed that a Blu-ray edition is “in development.” However, Disney also has a huge hit on their hands with Pirates. Disney would rather have consumers return to the well and double dip. The strategy is to hit them up huge this Christmas — make Pirates be the must have X-Mas DVD gift. Then, present a Blu-ray edition next year. Of course early adaptors are going to buy the DVD twice.
I asked my Disney Insider about Blu-ray special features for Pirates 2. That’s where, he informed me, Pirates will shine. Director Gore Verbinski will be directly involved. Expect a couple commentaries with “integrated branching” — one from the talent, the other focused on SFX.
Contrary to what you may’ve read elsewhere, Disney CEO Robert Iger is a proponent of Blu-ray and emerging technologies. As a publicly traded company that has to deal with forecasts, Disney is just being cautious (my Disney Insider generalized). Here’s additional confirmation from late last night:
Disney’s biggest summer hits Cars and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest won’t be coming to Blu-ray this year, company president and CEO Bob Iger confirmed during the studios third-quarter earnings call Wednesday morning.“We need a few things in terms of platform penetration,” Iger said. “It’s still early in the life of next-generation DVD to predict. In all likelihood, adoption of next-gen DVD will be slower to market than standard-definition DVD, which was rather dramatic.”
Iger quickly added that he believes in the long-term success of high-definition.
After a rough and tumble year, standard-definition DVD sales were on the rise, with strong performance by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe helping to drive Disney third-quarter earnings increases, the company reported.
Throughout the call, execs talked up Disney’s online and mobile plans for its business. The company said it expects more than $500 million in revenue from Internet downloads, online ad revenue and other Internet revenue, excluding theme park bookings.
During the two months this summer that the studio offered Desperate Housewives, Lost and other TV shows for free on ABC.com, the network clocked more than 5 million viewings.
Iger said he is “confident there are tremendous opportunities in online and mobile video” via subscriptions, advertising and video-on-demand.
Source: Video Business
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