When the studio began planning its sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious, Finkelstein said the studio was "able to feel a little more comfortable knowing that if we spent even more money and had better action and better stunts we would sell even more DVDs."
Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, said the prospect of DVD sales helped it afford the hefty budget of its summer hit Bad Boys 2, with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. "Clearly the economics of some of the big event pictures we are seeing probably would not work without DVD," he said.
DVDs make sequels more profitable because they promote sales of their predecessor on the discs. In a summer flooded with big-budget sequels that disappointed at the box office, like Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle, from Columbia Tristar, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 2, from Paramount Pictures, some in Hollywood wonder if the potential bounty from DVD sales may have led to hasty decisions.
"What may have happened was that some of these sequels got made faster and with less time and effort than people would have previously put into them because there was this big opportunity out there," said Finkelstein, of Universal Pictures. He said that he thought his own studio's 2 Fast 2 Furious and third American Pie movie -- both well-suited to the appetites of DVD buyers -- were exceptions to the norm.
DVD sales have begun influencing television, too, offering a new source of income to shows that might sell well as the networks and studios have begun selling past episodes of some shows on DVD after they have been broadcast even while new episodes are airing.
Some DVD fans, meanwhile, may be cognizant of their image. A "DVD Lexicon" on the Web site DVD Journal, for example, defines the terms "My Wife Moved Out" as "a common ailment" of audio-video consumers.
RSS