Looks like that artificial window of time placed between when a film is released in theaters and when it is released on DVD is indeed getting shorter.
Universal Studios Home Video have announced the Region 1 DVD release of Serenity for 20th December 2005 priced at $29.98 SRP. A passenger with a deadly secret. Six rebels on the run. An assassin in pursuit. When the renegade crew of Serenity agrees to hide a fugitive on their ship, they find themselves in an action-packed battle between the relentless military might of a totalitarian regime who will destroy anything - or anyone - to get the girl back and the bloodthirsty creatures who roam the uncharted areas of space. But, the greatest danger of all may be on their ship. From the mind of Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel) comes a new edge-of-your-seat adventure loaded with explosive battles, gripping special effects and fantastic new worlds!
Available in separate Widescreen and Full Screen editions features include:
English and French DD5.1 Surround
English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles
Feature Commentary with Writer/Director Joss Whedon
Deleted Scenes
Outtakes
Future History: The Story of Earth That Was
What’s in a Firefly
Re-Lighting the Firefly
Joss Whedon Introduction
via DVDTimes
Combination of factors here. The early finish on postproduction as compared to the theater release date, the speed with which Serenity left the theaters (the window is from when a run ends, not when it begins, and runs are usually longer than 3-4 weeks), and the pressure of the holiday season. Especially when you consider that some of the initial dvd success of the Firefly series might have been tied to its holiday release date, I’m not surprised to see it out on dvd so quickly.
Plus, of course, all of the conspiracy theorists will have pointed to the relative lack of special features as definitive proof that a special edition dvd will be out later anyway.
Some will argue that the window has be detached from the end of theater run already. In fact some studios are beginning to release the DVD while the movie is still in its theatrical run, and at least one studio plans to do simultaneous release. Even an executive at Walt Disney stated this past summer:
Yeah, yeah, and Mark Cuban is frothing at the mouth to get his 2929 Studios (or whatever the hell it’s called) to be the first one to put out solid product in the theater, on dvd, and on one of his channels (been reading about this on variety on my palm, too lazy to find actual data) simultaneously. The distributors (aka the theater chain owners) are screaming bloody fucking murder about this, and it remains to be see which of the big studios will be the first one to try shafting them.
(also, keep in mind that disney does a lot of direct-to-dvd films that might do reasonably well in short theatrical runs, so they’re probably more likely to look at that than anyone but the indies)
also, the linky is broke, and holy jeebus is that some horrible cover art.
I guess they wanted consistency, as I thought the movie posters were equally as horrible.
Well, I was going to try and correct you, but a google search showed that I was thinking of the teaser poster art, which was all nice warm firefly-ish oranges, reds, and browns, not the cheesy straight-to-dvd plasma blue. But seriously, have you looked at the random hordes on the bottom portion of the dvd cover? I suppose they’re assuming that people will only be buying this if they know what they’re looking at, since I know I sure as hell would keep on looking if I saw this cover, blind, at a video store.
Here’s Joss’ comments on the DVD art, snipped from the official site (via whedonesque)
I saw that as well. I guess he says, “Guess what else…” as he had previously posted about the fact that Serenity is having its theatrical runs cancelled in some countries and instead going straight to DVD. So, in response to many fans complaining he said he is not the boss of it. Oh, and recommended they find a friend with a big screen TV.
Yeah, I liked that bit.