20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment's Best Picture Nominee 12 Years A Slave To DVD And Blu-ray On Mar. 4

It appears as if 20^th Century-Fox Home Entertainment waited as long as it could before announcing the street date for DVD and Blu-ray editions of director Steve McQueen’s Best Picture Oscar nominee, 12 Years a Slave.   

With the box office languishing at just $45.9 million (from the plains of the midwest to the eastern seaboard the theatrical scene has been devastated by an extremely rough winter) — and with the big Oscar event rapidly approaching on Mar. 2 — the studio has decided to go ahead and bring DVD and Blu-ray editions to the home entertainment market place on Mar. 4.

For the record, the ARR is 137 days.

To give you some idea at the uphill battle that Fox is facing with 12 Years a Slave, Gravity has generated ticket sales of $264 million, American Hustle’s box office take currently stands at $133.5 million and the just-released on Blu-ray and DVD Captain Phillips pulled in $106.5 million … even the Wolf of Wall Street has more than double the ticket sales (with the heavy R-rating, the excessive language and the marathon running time it narrowed its audience significantly in certain geographic areas of the country).

Consumers are voting with their wallets and 12 Years a Slave is simply not getting the votes it should when you consider the solid reviews and Oscar nominations that include Best Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Best Supporting Actor (Michael Fassbender), Best Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong'o) and Best Director.   

As to bonus features, there are two featurettes — “The Team” and “The Score” — with the Blu-ray SKU having an exclusive third featurette title “An Historical Portrait.”