Warner Bros. Home Entertainment doubled-back this week with
a surprise Sept. 1 street-date for George Miller’s long-awaited reboot of the Mad
Max series, Mad Max: Fury Road.
This will be a three-SKU product offering — the traditional DVD (a
double-disc affair) and Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack configurations, plus a 3D/2D
Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack edition.
The ARR is 109 days and domestic ticket sales were a robust
$151 million.
With San Andreas getting an Oct. 20 release
date last week, it appeared certain that this Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron
all-action thriller would also be given an October release window as well, but
sharp eyes over at Warner Bros. must have spotted that wide open street-date
Tuesday on the first of September and jumped all over it.
Whatever street date given to Mad
Max: Fury Road — either before or after Labor Day — will be just fine
for fans eager to crank up the volume and enjoy the wasteland action.
The so-called “Hollywood” studios had nothing in the way of
new hit theatrical releases (those films grossing in excess of $25 million)
planned for Aug. 18, Aug. 25 or Sept. 1, which is exceedingly rare to go so
many street-date Tuesdays in a row without something to stir action at
retail. This solves at least one of
those release window vacancies — indeed, during this entire three week period
there is only one other film set for DVD and Blu-ray that has generated ticket
sales in excess of $10 million (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s Aloha
on Aug. 25, which rides home with $21 million at the box office).
Back in 1981, filmmaker George Miller released The
Road Warrior, starring Mel Gibson, which was a monster hit that
delivered some of the best action scenes ever put to film — the finale was a
stunner! In 1985, we got Mad
Max Beyond Thunderdome, which was a huge disappointment … a franchise
killer!
After 30 years, Miller finally returned to the energy of The
Road Warrior and took the best of that film and extended throughout Mad
Max: Fury Road, basically The Road Warrior on steroids. It did not disappoint … and the ending left
it open for further adventures.
The bonus features are common to all three SKUs (basically
the bonus DVD disc can be stripped out later on) and include: deleted scenes
and a half-dozen featurettes — “Maximum Fury: Filming Fury Road,” “Mad Max:
Fury on Four Wheels,” “The Road Warriors: Max and Furiosa,” “The Tools of the
Wasteland,” “The Five Wives: So Shiny, So Chrome” and “Fury Road: Crash &
Smash.”
The two Blu-ray SKUs include UltraViolet.
Tabbed for Sept. 29 is writer/director Doug Ellin’s Entourage. The ARR for that street date comes in at 116
days and the box office take was a lackluster $32.2 million.
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will be making available a
DVD edition as well as a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack SKU (with UltraViolet), with
all of the bonus goodies exclusive to the latter (save deleted scenes, which
will be common to both).
This Blu-ray exclusives include a gag reel and five
production featurettes — “The Gang: Still Rockin’ It,” “Hollywood, Baby!,” “The
Making of Hyde,” “Meet the Newest Member of Entourage” and “Lucas Ellin is
Jonah Gold.”
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