“Road” will wind way to video with Oscar push
Thursday November 21 3:05 AM ET
One of the early contenders for the best picture Oscar, “Road to Perdition,” has been scheduled for a DVD/video release by DreamWorks just in time for Oscar nomination voting, which closes Feb. 25.
Unlike the DVD of his Oscar-winning “American Beauty,” helmer Sam Mendes ( news) includes deleted scenes on the DVD of “Perdition” ($19.95) with his commentary.
DreamWorks is backing the release with a multimillion-dollar TV marketing campaign during the February sweeps and into Oscar voting in March. “Perdition” grossed about $104 million at the North American box office.
The studio’s entry for the animated feature Oscar, “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,” galloped out of the gate Tuesday with first-day sales for the title, which generated $73 million at the box office, estimated at about 1.5 million copies. That’s about 29% of the initial shipment of the picture, with retail orders and reorders up to about 6 million copies, according to industry sources; that’s comparable to levels for some theatrical films with twice the box office.
Bucking a recent trend skewing toward DVD, about 60% of “Spirit” sales so far are on VHS, according to DreamWorks, which is indicative of the kids demographic audience of the movie. Homes with young children have been the slowest to buy DVD players, but titles such as “Monsters, Inc.” have been selling more DVD than VHS copies.