EXCLUSIVE HTF ANNOUNCEMENT: Twilight Time May/June Releases (You will want to read this!) (1 Viewer)

[Yorkshire]

I do not wish to encourage nefarious practices, but this sort of releasing does just that.
$100 (which is what many will have to pay for As Good as it Gets) is too much for a film.
But $100, rip it to a HDD to play back on your TV/Blu-ray Disc Player/Media Player, then sell it to someone else for $100 means you'll effectively get it for nothing.
Could anyone be blamed for doing that, given this ridiculous release policy?
Studios are their own worst enemies. I'm not one of those people who thinks every release should be $2, and I'd pay £10-£15 for As Good as it Gets, as would many other people...more tham 3,000 of us, I'd guess.
Steve W

 

[haineshisway]

I do not wish to encourage nefarious practices, but this sort of releasing does just that.
$100 (which is what many will have to pay for As Good as it Gets) is too much for a film.
But $100, rip it to a HDD to play back on your TV/Blu-ray Disc Player/Media Player, then sell it to someone else for $100 means you'll effectively get it for nothing.
Could anyone be blamed for doing that, given this ridiculous release policy?
Studios are their own worst enemies. I'm not one of those people who thinks every release should be $2, and I'd pay £10-£15 for As Good as it Gets, as would many other people...more tham 3,000 of us, I'd guess.
Steve W

Before getting to the scenario you propose, the title will actually have to sell out. Given that only one Twilight Time title has sold out, it's not quite time to panic yet. It took over eight weeks for the one title that has sold out to sell out (from the time it was announced) - you know where to buy it if it's something you'd like to have. It's not coming out for twenty dollars, fifteen dollars, ten dollars, or five dollars. All that need be done is to purchase or not. Obviously Sony did not think this would sell sufficiently over 3,000 copies and my guess is they're correct in that assumption. Whether you're one who thinks things should be two dollars is not the relevant point - the relevant point is that what the brief history of Blu-ray has shown us is that with very few exceptions catalog titles don't sell well. I've seen the sales figures and they're occasionally shocking with some titles not even breaking a thousand - and I'm talking about the stuff that gets to Target, Walmart, etc. What happens with each and every one of those titles is that people balk at the original price (let's say it's $15) and proudly boast that they'll wait until it's ten. When it's ten they come on these boards and proudly boast that they'll wait till it hits the five-dollar bin. And even then, when the studios would rather let them be loss leaders than get back thousands of copies they'd then have to store, some people still don't purchase it. And you wonder why things are the way they are? The studios have had it - it's clear they want no part of it, because the loss leaders and returns make it not appetizing to do it. Who can blame them?
If As Good as it Gets is such an important film to folks, pay the thirty bucks and get it. It's that simple. My guess is it will not be an instant sellout and everyone will have plenty of time to get it.

 

[Robin9]

I do not wish to encourage nefarious practices, but this sort of releasing does just that.
$100 (which is what many will have to pay for As Good as it Gets) is too much for a film.

I don't understand. Why will anyone have to pay $100?

 

[Craig Beam]

Ugh, that cover is hideous. I thought the MGM Hitchcocks were bad.... Well, fortunately, we have the option of customizing our own:

 

[dpippel]

Originally Posted by Robin9 /t/318832/exclusive-htf-announcement-twilight-time-may-june-releases-you-will-want-to-read-this/120#post_3913137
I don't understand. Why will anyone have to pay $100?

He's probably referring to the situation that cropped up when Fright Night sold out. Afterwards, copies started materializing on eBay and other sites for up to $100, and people were paying it.

 

[Robin9]

He's probably referring to the situation that cropped up when Fright Night sold out. Afterwards, copies started materializing on eBay and other sites for up to $100, and people were paying it.

Well, thank you for that explanation but now I don't understand why someone will refuse to pay Twilight Time's price of circa $40.00 but will pay $100.00 to someone else!

 

[dpippel]

Originally Posted by Robin9 /t/318832/exclusive-htf-announcement-twilight-time-may-june-releases-you-will-want-to-read-this/120#post_3913356
Well, thank you for that explanation but now I don't understand why someone will refuse to pay Twilight Time's price of circa $40.00 but will pay $100.00 to someone else!

In the case of Fright Night, there may have been some buyers at $100 who missed out on the preorder and just had to have the disc after it sold out. I doubt that anyone who balked at a $40 price tag when it was available through Twilight Time would drop a Benjamin on it later.

 

[rsmithjr]

In the case of Fright Night, there may have been some buyers at $100 who missed out on the preorder and just had to have the disc after it sold out. I doubt that anyone who balked at a $40 price tag when it was available through Twilight Time would drop a Benjamin on it later.

I also think that some of the buying on eBay is speculative in character, with people buying in the belief that the price will spiral upwards, rather than actually wanting the title. The number of NEW packages suggests that this is the case.

 

[dpippel]

Originally Posted by rsmithjr /t/318832/exclusive-htf-announcement-twilight-time-may-june-releases-you-will-want-to-read-this/120#post_3913463
I also think that some of the buying on eBay is speculative in character, with people buying in the belief that the price will spiral upwards, rather than actually wanting the title. The number of NEW packages suggests that this is the case.

Good point.

 

[Mark Collins]

I just happened to find out you can now order Demetrius Blu-ray from Amazon. I had no idea until now that Twilight Time also used Amazon as a place to sell their release's

 

[TonyD]

I think amazon is priced higher then TT if you order direct from TT.
Anyway from their FB page......
Twilight Time DVD Label -- Journey and The Big Heat both go up for pre-order on Friday, April 13th, at 4pm e.s.t.
11 minutes ago · Like

 

[haineshisway]

Actually no one orders from Twilight Time directly - orders are through their distributor, Screen Archives. Nor does amazon sell the titles - Screen Archives' amazon store does and that's why they're higher priced there, to cover the amazon fees.

 

[TonyD]

Semantics and not important to me. I go to amazon it costs more I go to TT via SA it's still a lot but not as much as Amazon

 

[Yorkshire]

I may be completely wrong, but I can't imagine this won't outsell Fright Night.
Steve W

 

[TravisR]

I may be completely wrong, but I can't imagine this won't outsell Fright Night.
Steve W

As Good As It Gets? Not that I have anything to back it up but there's no way that that outsells Fright Night. That's not to say that one is better than the other but Fright Night has a devoted fanbase that As Good As It Gets doesn't even remotely have.

 

[GMpasqua]

Marketing catalog titles at the $15 - $20 dollar price range seems to be the best price point. Over $25 and you're starting to push it - esp if there are no extras. But when pricing under $15 and you are cheapening the product and the film.

Sure you could buy some catalog titles at $20 when they first are released and then less than a year later the price drops to $7.99. What does that tell you - the film didn't sell let's get what we can - must be a bad film

I worked in marketing for a long time and we tested price points all the time. When something was priced too low people didn't buy it - because they thought it wasn't any good, but sales increased when released at a higher price. If you offer a quality price people percieve a quality product

Criterion titles are great - they come out at $40 but twice a year you wait and get them for $20 at B&N. But you know you're buying a $40 disc.

Putting a catalog titles in wallmart for $5.00 is not fair to the film's reputation - people remember that was a bargin bin title and aren't likely to buy it when released on a new format at a much higher price. But if they see that film always for $20 they mught think it's worth getting.

Do companies really sell that much more at $5.00? on average the quanity would have to be about 3 to 1 to break even

 

[rsmithjr]

Marketing catalog titles at the $15 - $20 dollar price range seems to be the best price point. Over $25 and you're starting to push it - esp if there are no extras. But when pricing under $15 and you are cheapening the product and the film.

I suspect that this depends on the title.
One theory is that there are only a small number of people who are likely to buy certain catalog titles, but those people are relatively price-insensitive. Hence, there would not be much elasticity. If this is true, reducing the price to $15 for the title doesn't sell very many more copies over the sales you would have generated with a $30 price point.
The studios have a lot of data about sales and have certainly run elasticity simulations to help them with pricing and distribution strategies. For a given title, they probably have projections about what the sales would be at various price points, and can calculate the profit or loss of any price or distribution model. The projections are backed up by previous performance of similar titles from their own studio and other studios. Remember that they have detailed data on their own sales and expensive marketing research about other studios.
My personal belief is that the titles TT is selling are movies that have a small core of people who are avid film collectors and are really committed to buying the title on Blu-ray, but that most consumers are not that keenly interested at any price.
The role of extras in these matters is probably also something that they have thought about. If you have extras already and there are no rights issues, then including them is easy. But if you have to contemplate making them, this can greatly increase the cost of production, and has to be taken into account in the marketing model. My guess is that extras are not very important to the TT audience but that high AV quality of the feature itself is important.

 

[Richard V]

Someone posted on Bluray.com that Journey will go up for presale order on April 13th, 4 EST. Not sure if this is AM or PM

 

[TonyD]

Someone posted on Bluray.com that Journey will go up for presale order on April 13th, 4 EST. Not sure if this is AM or PM

SomeonE posted that just a few posts back.

 

[Richard V]

Trying to get on Screen Archives web site to order Journey for last 15 minutes, can't get through. Server getting overwhelmed?