Monday, July 27, 2015

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment's Mad Max: Fury Road Roars Home As DVD And Blu-ray Product Offerings On Sept. 1


DVD & Blu-ray Release Report, Ralph Tribbey
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.

DVD & Blu-ray Release Report, Ralph TribbeyThe 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).

DVD & Blu-ray Release Report, Ralph Tribbey
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.

DVD & Blu-ray Release Report, Ralph TribbeyThe 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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