Tim Burton's remake of Alice in Wonderland almost didn't have a premiere in London, thanks to a theater upset over Disney's plans to release the DVD early.
Disney usually begins selling DVDs 17 weeks after the film debuts in theaters, but for Alice, the studio wanted to bump the release up by more than a month, BusinessWeek reports. That riled Odeon, the United Kingdom's largest theater chain, which threatened to pull the film in protest. Disney executives had to fly across the pond to make a deal, offering that only two or three films would be released early on DVD every year.
Alice in Wonderland producer Joe Roth told BusinessWeek that the two sides are still negotiating. Meanwhile, Disney struck a deal with another theater chain, Vue Entertainment, to secure today's film premiere.
Movie theaters are still a lucrative business for the film industry. Last year, movie theater spending was up 10 percent in the United States, pulling in $9.87 billion. That's more than all optical media sales combined, which accounted for $8.73 billion in the United States according to Adams Research.
But with all the film industry hysteria over Netflix and Redbox -- both agreed recently to delay rentals of new Warner Bros. releases by 28 days -- it's easy to forget that there's pressure coming from both sides. While studios are trying to secure a period where purchase and rental through brick-and-mortar stores are the only ways to get a DVD, they still can't boost DVD earnings by selling them sooner without upsetting theaters.
Unlike the deals struck with Netflix and Redbox, however, early DVD releases benefit consumers. You could even argue that selling DVDs a month earlier would negate 28-day rental delays, because you're able to rent movies at around the same time (even though the DVD goes on sale first). This is just a case of theaters trying to protect their business model, at the expense of everyone else.
