Mill Creek Entertainment On The Cutting Edge With The Nov. 14 DVD And Blu-ray Rollout Of Writer/Director Andrew Hyatt's The Blind: The True Story of the Robertson Family

Mill Creek Entertainment has selected Nov. 14 as the street date for DVD and Blu-ray editions of writer/director Andrew Hyatt’s faith-based biopic, The Blind: The True Story of the Robertson Family.

 

The ARR is a quick-to-market 46 days and the domestic box office take (not counting church-based screenings) was $5.2 million.

 

This is a trendsetter that the entertainment industry would be wise to take notice of.   So before we get into the details about the film itself, it is important that we spend just a little bit of time talking about the shifting landscape.

 

Here goes.   The traditional “Hollywood” studios spent 100 years building an ultra-dominate theatrical distribution network.   They controlled everything … all of the blockbuster were theirs.

 

And then along came the Covid pandemic.   And they went all-in on streaming.  

 

One hundred years and the gold mine of physical media (you know, DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD) were cast aside in a rush to lose billions of dollars on the folly of streaming.   A business model that doesn’t work and in the process has put the release pace for DVD and Blu-ray in the “alternative market space” on steroids … pristine masters of new movies (and series programming) are being offered to “helpers” (old school: pirates, bootleggers, etc.) without consequences.

 

Consumers have a hunger for things they like and the studios have shunned them.

 

A case in point is director Alejandro Monteverde’s Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, which Disney tried to bury when it acquired 20th Century-Fox.   Monteverde, Caviezel and producer Eduardo Verastegui were able to re-acquire their film and hooked up with Angel Studios to handle the theatrical distribution.  

 

Disney threw it away and the film grossed $184 million.   Indie films without studio support don’t gross these numbers unless there is a consumer demand that is not being fulfilled.   

 

On Oct. 13, recording artist Taylor Swift is going to do the same thing.   Her Eras Tour concert is bypassing the traditional studios for a worldwide theatrical event … according to the industry trade publication The Hollywood Reporter (Oct. 08 Twitter feed) advanced ticket sales just passed the 100 million dollar mark.   

 

The traditional “Hollywood” studios have created a vacuum … nature abhors a vacuum, so the result is a giant “work-around,” which brings us back full-circle to Mill Creek Entertainment DVD and Blu-ray launch of The Blind: The True Story of the Robertson Family.

 

There’s not a “Hollywood” studio that would touch a faith-based biopic about Phil Robertson (played by Aron von Andrian — Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Purple Beatz) — before the Duck Dynasty fame — and his wife Kay (Amelia Eve — The Haunting of Bly Manor, Shadowland, The Darkness).  A film about faith, failure, family and redemption … not a chance that it would get distribution.

 

So this indie film got creative and did a national Fathom Events theatrical launch on Sept. 28.

 

The only way you get people into theatres is by word of mouth when you go that route.   Churches and social media … they are not the traditional “Hollywood” multi-million dollar advertising and PR approach to launch a film.  

 

The Blind: The True Story of the Robertson Family pulled in $5.4 million … that will put the production into the black.   That’s more than the traditional “Hollywood” studios can say about many of their big budget productions this year — FYI, Sound of Freedom out-grossed Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and they opened theatrically the same week.

 

Things appear to be changing, and Mill Creek Entertainment with the release of filmmaker Andrew Hyatt’s The Blind: The True Story of the Robertson Family on both DVD and Blu-ray on Nov. 14, appears to be on the cutting edge of this tectonic shift.

 

Bonus goodies include deleted scenes and the featurette titled “The Story Behind The Blind from the People Who Lived It.”