Lord of the Rings PPV encroaches DVD

UPDATE: New Line delays longer version for DirecTV, wants sequel peek pulled.

By Ann Donahue and Scott Hettrick -- Video Business, 9/23/2002

SEPT. 23 | After an internal re-evaluation at New Line among the TV and home video units, the company decided Monday to push back the DirecTV pay-per-view debut of the special 3½-hour Extended Edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1.

New Line also said it has asked DirecTV to pull the 10-minute behind-the-scenes peek at the sequel, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, from being included in a special PPV option offering more than an hour of extra material with the movie for an extra $1.

The new Dec. 1 PPV premiere date of the Extended Edition is still less than three weeks after the Nov. 12 debut of the DVD that New Line Home Entertainment has been touting as exclusive and produced specially for DVD by director Peter Jackson.

That remains an unprecedented short window for any movie to go from video to PPV, much less the biggest movie of 2001 and a title that will have an extraordinarily high suggested retail price range of between $40-$80 for a four-disc set.

New Line Television this month provided DirecTV with the extra features included on last month's DVD release of the original theatrical version of Lord of the Rings, which debuted on PPV on Sept. 5, just 30 days after the title hit video stores. In addition to the sneak peek at Two Towers, which has also been highly touted as having been specifically produced for DVD consumers, the hour of extras available for just $4.99 include the behind-the-scenes documentary A Passage to Middle Earth and Enya's "May It Be" music video.

New Line Home Entertainment said that none of the hours of extra DVD features on the Nov. 12 extended edition will be offered on PPV but deferred all other questions about the PPV situation to the New Line TV division in New York, which handles pay TV deals.

Reached on deadline last Friday, David Spiegelman, senior executive VP of domestic-TV distribution and marketing at New Line, provided a Nov. 25 PPV date for the extended edition but said he did not have time to discuss any of the other specifics relating to this new PPV strategy. Spiegelman recently completed a deal with the cable industry's In Demand PPV service to make all three of the movies in the Lord of the Rings trilogy available to In Demand's video-on-demand service.

Sources at New Line had said initially that the inclusion of the Two Towers teaser on PPV was a mistake, that it had been "erroneously provided" to DirecTV. (New Line TV was said to have made another mistake this summer when it made the video premiere movie Happy Campers available to run in prime time on a national commercial broadcast TV network after the title had been released as a video premiere movie in stores about a month earlier.)

On Friday, more than two weeks after the programming began running on PPV, DirecTV spokesman Bob Marsocci said the satellite service continues to run the extra footage. "Upon a request from New Line, we will cease airing it. We have yet to receive that request," he said.

The showing of the trailer on PPV would seem to be of particular concern to New Line Home Entertainment, which has a three-tiered distribution plan to keep ratcheting up the number of exclusive extras on subsequent DVD releases during the fourth quarter to attract hardcore fans.

While the extended edition is not technically a new movie for video or PPV since it is a version of the movie recently released, it is being promoted, packaged and priced as a new and different movie and therefore would seem to fall under the same kinds of windows attached to all new releases.

However, the definition of what constitutes a new movie and which extra features are truly exclusive to DVD is becoming fuzzy.

DirecTV, in an effort to generate more revenue from its PPV movies, has been unveiling more and more titles with bonus footage as early as possible in the PPV window.

"We're trying to give people on the fence a reason to order PPV and generate extra buzz about the category," said Michael Thornton, senior VP of programming and acquisitions at DirecTV. "It's largely targeted at people who already have the service. These kinds of things may keep some people who were thinking about switching to another multiplatform service."

Among the upcoming movies to get the extra special treatment on DirecTV will be MGM Home Entertainment's Windtalkers, which will have behind-the-scenes footage when it premieres in December.

Another promotion is with Paramount Home Entertainment's Britney Spears movie Crossroads, in which fans can get the CD soundtrack for the film free if they send in a copy of their PPV receipt to an outlet in Colorado.

Other PPV marketing tactics being employed include outtakes from MGM's Bandits, Rollerball and Hart's War and New Line's I Am Sam for no extra charge.

In addition, DirecTV has offered select movies as a double feature, such as Universal Studios Home Video's American Pie and American Pie 2.

Sometimes, however, a good old-fashioned price reduction attracts the most attention, Thornton said. The company has offered select movies for one-penny PPV events, including Legally Blonde.

"Taking the price from $3.99 to $1.99 at the end of the PPV cycle really seems to help," he said.

Currently, Buena Vista Home Entertainment's The Others is being offered on DirecTV for this discount price.

PPV sales numbers on any of these promotions were not released.

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