20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment's Birdman To Fly Home On Blu-ray And DVD On Feb. 17

Likely to be lost in the rush to take advantage of films nominated for Oscars will be the DVD and Blu-ray (with UltraViolet) launch of writer/director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman.   

The street date will be Feb. 17, which is timed correctly as the Oscar awards telecast is on Feb. 22, but 20^th Century-Fox Home Entertainment has taken the position during the past few months that promotional support (publicity, marketing and advertising) for its new theatrical releases headed to the home entertainment market place is simply not necessary. 

If this attitute de l'indifférence complète holds to form, then Birdman will not receive much in the way of a PR effort from 20^th Century-Fox Home Entertainment, despite being nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Alejandro González Iñárritu — previously nominated for Babel), Best Actor (Michael Keaton — his first Oscar nomination), Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton — nominated previously for American History X and Primal Fear), Best Supporting Actress (Emma Stone — her first Oscar nomination) and Best Original Screenplay (Iñárritu, along with Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. and Armando Bo).

The ARR for that Feb. 17 street date works out to 123 days and the box office take thus far is light at just $26.3 million.   The film opened last October and is down to just a handful of screens, so improvement on the domestic box office front will be tough to come by.

In what has become an all-too-common pattern for new product announcements emanating from 20^th Century-Fox Home Entertainment, there is no word, just yet, on any bonus features that might be included with either the DVD or Blu-ray release of Birdman.