In the Expanding World of DVD, Everyone’s a Critic

Spurred by booming sales of DVD players, the major studios are unleashing a flood of major titles on the digital format this fall--which in turn is likely to push the sale of players even higher for the holiday shopping season.

The coming weeks will see not only the release of collector’s editions of such recent box-office hits as “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “The Mummy Returns,” “Shrek” and “Planet of the Apes,” but also the DVD debuts of such classic films as “The Godfather” trilogy, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “The French Connection,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “The Terminator,” “Funny Girl,” “Dr. Zhivago,” “From Here to Eternity” and “On the Waterfront.”

Even George Lucas is finally allowing one of his “Star War” films to enter the DVD universe: “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” is set for release on Oct. 16 from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, sporting deleted scenes and seven new sequences completed just for the DVD.

In just four years, the digital video format has “revolutionized home video, both rental and sell-through,” says Bo Andersen, president of the Video Software Dealers Assn. He says there are more than 20 million DVD players in homes now. Total shipments of DVDs to retailers, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, have increased from 5.5 million units in 1997 to 461.9 million through the second quarter of this year. According to Adams Media Research, DVD sales and rentals jumped from $1.6 billion in 1999 to $4.1 billion last year and are projected to reach $8.5 billion this year.

Alison Biggers, executive director of DVD marketing for Columbia TriStar, says the public’s acceptance of the digital format, which offers better picture and sound quality than video cassettes, has “outpaced what everyone expected initially.” That has encouraged studios to spend the money to convert more films to digital, often packaging them with commentaries by the filmmakers and other “bonus” material so that consumers are getting more than what was earlier offered on the video.

Disney’s “Snow White,” for example, due in stores Oct. 9, features a game, character design galleries, deleted scenes and the original radio broadcast of the L.A. premiere. “Citizen Kane,” which came out Tuesday, includes a second disc with an Emmy Award-winning documentary about the making of the 1941 film. “The Godfather,” also due out Oct. 9, features five discs and such extras as commentary from director Francis Ford Coppola, rehearsal footage and Academy Awards acceptance speeches.

The major decision on whether to release an old film on DVD is the condition of the master print, says Mike Saksa, vice president of U.S. marketing for Warner Home Video. “If the master is imperfect, then the flaws will show up even more [on DVD]. They are not viable to put on DVD.”

In the case of “Citizen Kane,” Warner Home Video spent years constructing a new print of Orson Welles’ landmark black-and-white film. Such efforts, says Peter Staddon, senior vice president of marketing for Fox, are becoming more the norm.

“What DVDs have done is given people who have done film restoration on the lot a budget to work with,” he explains. “When you look at some of the restoration work the studio is doing now, it is not just being done for a purely altruistic sense. There is a commercial outlet for this now.”

As the DVD market grows, more films are beginning to make double appearances on the format--once with just the movie (similar to the video), again with all the extras. Columbia TriStar’s Oct. 23 release of a two-disc “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is the second time around for that 1975 film.

Biggers says the studio is sensitive to the consumer when making such decisions. “We don’t want to come back with a product that isn’t really different from our original release,” she says. The new version features commentary from the British comedy troupe and several eccentric offerings, such as a version of the film in Japanese with English subtitles, and another version for people who don’t like the movie, which substitutes subtitles from a Shakespeare play.

Consequently, Biggers believes Monty Python fans who have the first DVD edition won’t mind shelling out more money for this one. “It is such a different experience than watching the original version,” she maintains. “If it was just adding a couple of outtakes, we wouldn’t necessarily go back. We want to make sure we have enough material to offer the consumer a different experience on the second release.”

As the DVD market has grown, VHS rental revenue has fallen, from $17.7 billion two years ago to $16.9 billion last year. It’s projected to drop another $2 billion this year.

Still, the studios aren’t ignoring the VHS format. “If you look at last year, 20th Century Fox sold more VHS tapes than we have ever sold,” says Staddon. “Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer in the world, sold 10 times more VHS players than they did DVD players. The VHS market is still huge. DVD may be up around 25% penetration, but VHS is 90% penetration and has multiple [players] in each home. What we are seeing is that a lot of people may have DVD players for themselves and may be more inclined to have a VHS for their kids in their bedroom. They won’t let their kids anywhere near their precious DVD players.”

What DVD has done, Staddon says with a laugh, is create 20 million film critics: The bonus material has made viewers much more sophisticated. “They are interested in deleted scenes not just from a blooper point of view anymore,” he says. “They listen to the commentary and try to understand why [a scene] was deleted. People are actually paying attention to that.”