Comic-Con crowds to get big dose of Blu-ray

Sony to demo BD Live on convention floor

By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 7/18/2008

JULY 18 | Many major and independent studios will use next week’s Comic-Con 2008 in San Diego to promote new entertainment releases. Blu-ray Disc, in particular, will be on display as studios seek to expose the format to “the Con’s” 25,000 serious entertainment fans.

Last year, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment were among studios that saw value in the crowd’s demographics to introduce Blu-ray products at Comic-Con for the first time. This year at Comic-Con, running July 24-27, Sony, such new Blu-ray supporters as Universal Studios Home Entertainment and others will use the conference as a critical Blu-ray consumer megaphone.

Sony will again host a Blu-ray-oriented booth on the convention floor. Executives will demo BD Live features of Aug. 5 DVD premiere Starship Troopers 3: Marauder. In the interactivity, users can create ‘Trooper’ characters based on their own photos for insertion into different film scenes. A Starship Troopers panel is slated for July 26, and on July 25, Sony will formally announce the upcoming sequel Resident Evil: Degeneration.

• Warner Home Video will present a world premiere screening of its made-for-DVD movie Lost Boys: The Tribe at Comic-Con on July 24. The title streets on both standard DVD and Blu-ray on July 29. Ron Sanders, Warner’s president, said the studio often uses Comic-Con as a product launch platform because it’s so crucial to making its attendees aware of upcoming titles. “We actually program certain release dates around Comic-Con,” said Sanders. “The audience is such a match for certain genres, so we do a lot of promotion around the event.”.

Sanders credits the studio’s 2007 Comic-Con world premiere of made-for-DVD movie Superman: Doomsday for making the title a success when it bowed last September.

“We had two sell-out screening sessions [spanning] 4,000 people,” he said. “We wouldn’t have had the same word-of-mouth if we hadn’t done that.”

Warner also will hold a panel on July 24 for July 29 DVD releases Tiny Toon Adventures and Freakazoid and a session dedicated to Charlie Brown DVD product on July 25.

• On July 24, MGM Home Entertainment will premiere the July 29 DVD and Blu-ray release Stargate: Continuum at the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum in conjunction with Comic-Con.
• On July 26, Anchor Bay Entertainment will world premiere the theatrical trailer for Oct. 28 DVD and Blu-ray release of videogame-based feature Dead Space.
• Several upcoming Universal Blu-ray releases will be talked up around the Comic-Con floor. Universal will offer sneak peek scenes of such upcoming Blu-ray releases as The Incredible Hulk at the Marvel and Hasbro booths; Hellboy II: The Golden Army at the Dark Horse Comics booth; Wanted at the Top Cow comics publisher booth; and TV’s Heroes at the NBC Universal booth. Heroes season one and season two releases street on Blu-ray on Aug. 26. The other theatrical titles’ launch dates haven’t yet been announced.
• The Digital Entertainment Group is sponsoring a July 24 Blu-ray panel discussion featuring such DVD producers as Blade Runner’s Charles de Lauzirika, Pan’s Labyrinth’s Javier Soto and Rambo’s Cliff Stephenson.
• In other DVD-related Comic-Con events, Marvel’s booth will hand out Iron Man flash drives, featuring an advanced look of the upcoming DVD, and an Iron Man-branded poster tube.
• BBC Video, which distributes DVDs through Warner, is boasting its largest presence yet at Comic-Con. It is behind a July 27 panel hyping the July 22 DVD release of Spaced. Comic-Con attendees will be able to buy various BBC DVDs at the BBC America booth.
• Lionsgate sessions will be dedicated to Sept. 2 DVD/Blu-ray release of The Next Avengers Heroes of Tomorrow on July 25, and its Fraggle Rock franchise on July 27, among other presentations.
• 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment’s Nov. 4 DVD/Blu-ray release Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs, the second feature-length spin-off of the TV series, will be the subject of a July 25 panel. Fox also will roll out a July 25 panel for Prison Break, whose season three DVD bows on Aug. 12.