During a Sunday outing to see “Capote” at Landmark Theaters’ Plaza Frontenac Cinema in suburban St. Louis, I noticed that “Bubble” was already for sale on DVD even though the already short window between theater premiere and DVD wasn’t scheduled to open until Jan. 31. Theater employees were as surprised to get the DVDs early as I was to see them casually displayed at the ticket counter and concession stand. I asked Mark Cuban, an owner of Landmark and HDNet Films, by email about the early avail. Here’s the bulk of our brief exchange:
Q: Was there an intentional move up or did I just run into the one theater doing it early?
Cuban: “Intentional. They have a limited number of copies, we wanted to see how they sold.”
Q: How did they do?
Cuban: “Good, very good, but there were only a couple units per theater.”
I should have asked how Cuban et al will measure success for the collapsed windows’ strategy. Lots of people will be watching this experiment.
Related: Collapsing Windows: TDVoD Is The Mix
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