Disney Follows Fox in Removing Bonus Features From Rental DVDs

Posted on Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 by Peter Sciretta

Disney

In Mach, 20th Century Fox announced plans to strip rental DVDs of special features like commentaries and featurettes, in what David Chen called “a horrendously misguided attempt to spur retail DVD sales.” I quote Dave because I agree with him 100%. And in Hollywood, stupid ideas become viral.

AfterDawn is reporting that Disney has announced plans to follow in Fox’s footsteps and release two different classes of DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs, one of which is barebones, and meant for rental consumption only. The first titles, Morning Light, Confessions of a Shopaholic and Jonas Brothers: The Concert Experience, will hit rental store shelves (or should I say Netflix warehouses?) in June.

The big difference between the two companies is that Disney will be selling the barebones edition at a cheaper price-point (about 25% cheaper), and will allow allow companies the choice to buy either edition. 20th Century Fox is not offering rental stores a choice. It’s a smart move on Disney’s part because it forces the rental chains to make the tough choice.

Unfortunately, most people that rent at Blockbuster probably don’t care about audio commentaries or behind the scenes documentaries. And the few that do probably won’t convince the company to invest in the retail copies. It will be interesting to see if Netflix gives in and goes for the cheaper option, and a much bigger percentage of their customers care about special features and bonus discs.

While no decision has been made to allow rental chains to purchase the retail versions of DVDs, Fox has issued a statement saying that they are currently “reviewing its policy” after receiving a large amount of customer complaints.

Comments

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Joe Kick-Ass

this is bogus!!

Dude

Yes, I totally agree.

Blackstar

Personally, I don't care that much for bonus materials so their removal does not bother me. The only advantage I can see is the potential for them to use the extra room to increase the bitrates and give you a better picture?

However it is extremely unlikely they would do this, so all they have accomplished is alienating the rental customers who do care about bonus materials, made more work for themselves in releasing 2 different versions, which will more than likely cost even more money in the end.

So congrads Disney, you've just given your potential customers one more reason to hate you.

Jawmuncher

I'm interested in how this will affect netflix.
Since there probably the largest rental service now.

And slashfilm is right, people with netflix actually do care about the special features.

Dude

yeah, me too. If they do this, will the DVDs be just a couple of cents cheaper? I don't know, but this news sucks.

Eduke

i dont tnhink the cost of the DVDS in the stores will drop some cents, i think the price will be the same but the diference will go to the stores. so it wont be cheaper for the final user that rent the movie.

Infrafan

Only thing surprising is that Disney didn't do it before Fox.

StarBlazer101

GRRRRRR! Damn you Fox!

mav

time to defalte the netflix bubble

Palmer

Well at least Disney is providing a choice.

Dude_Diggler

It is not a stupid idea at all, it actually makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. It just sucks for us consumers.

brian

I'd like to see netflix (and even blockbuster online, there's no question what bb stores will do) carry both, like a 60/40 with the majority being without extras. the people who care to add the extras can, and netflix can still spend less than buying all full featured.

Juard Van Dijkhorst

I'd second that rental customers seldom seem to care for additional features.. Some such as myself will rent or buy a movie simply because of that bonus content, but we're in the minority. If only they would offer the making of pieces sans the movie...

The big box rental stores don't really cater to the special edition crowd though so it's possible customers won't be too vocal about the change. It's when they *cough* Slumdog *cough* accidently leave the additional content off the retail versions they may run into some problems.

starvingartist

I see this making sense for stores such as Hollywood Video and Blockbuster, but for Netflix, I dunno. Kind of irks me, as I love to watch the making of's.

blckmanjew

i haven't watched bonus material since probably middle school.. men in black

juicebox

Can someone answer this one: is it cheaper to have multiple versions of a movie on the market?

I would imagine the cheapest plan would be to have one version of the standard dvd, one bluray - it wouldn't have to be compiled multiple times for decidedly stupid reasons.

But with x number of versions out there, with studios like Fox botching the plan from the get go, it seems as though the ill-advised plan financially and for the people who are interested in the movies, but not to the tune of 20 dollars plus.

What this is really spurring on is more piracy - why would some spend 5 dollars on a movie rental with nothing on it when they can just download the same thing for FREE and not have to deal with due dates?

This will most unfortunately hurt the millions of sophisticated cinefiles who want to know everything about Confessions of a Shopaholic. Of course, you're a dick if you weren't planning on buying it in the first place.

UomoRagno

But remember there are also retail DVD versions for sale without any special features and people buy them. If the consumer is already spending a little less to own the barebones edition why wouldn't the rental companies do the same to save some money.

I like watching the extra stuff, but not everyone does. So I don't like this news but it doesn't surprise me.

RamJelly

Yeah, no shit. It seems like every DVD comes with sweet extras like "interactive menu" and if you want the good stuff you have to spend $5-$10 more. This seems like an attempt at an answer to the "problem" of people buying used DVDs. The video game companies have been whining about the used market for years. I guess movie studios are finally getting cranky as well. Still, it begs the question, do Disney and Fox WANT people to pirate their movies? If all I can get for rental is a bare bones DVD with just the movie (and a menu!) why wouldn't I just download a dvdrip before the thing even gets released?

UomoRagno

I could see that as an option. By default Netflix ships out the barebones edition of movies but for those of us that enjoy the extras, there is a checkbox in our account preferences that says we want the "Special Features" version of the movies we rent.

Not sure how feasible that is, but it is an idea.

Lars

To be honest: I do not understand the uproar, because this is common practise in Germany. Most DVDs (especially big budget movies) are released in a standard version and a deluxe version. The deluxe version contains only the movie and perhaps an audio commentary on the main disc and all bonus features are on a second disc. The standard version includes only the main disc and thus has little to no bonus features. If you rent a disc you only get the standard version.

topheavy

IMHO this changes nothing, people will still watch on netflix and download off the net, they are only hurting themselves when they shoot their own potential buyers.

David R

Does this mean i can actually watch a Disney film without first having to slog thoruh the obnoxious trailers of bad Disney films? Hooray! I might actually start renting them now.

Really. do we need the extras? What happened to just watching a good movie? And why should I have to pay more for stuff that is really boring as hell anyway? Heck, most of the time the commentary sounds as if the director is just painfully fluffing up 100 minutes of dead air and wants to leave the recording studio badly for a good round of golf. The deleted scenes were deleted for a reason. And the behind-the-scenes material is just self-indulgent jibberish. I want the movie, that's all i want. That, and my Junior Mints.

The only feature I appreciate is the captions so i can understand all those awful accents one finds in independent films.

Baba

fox does it = worst idea ever
disney does it = the idea is not that bad

lol biased?

Andrew Guenther

Netflix would be wise to not be like blockbuster and others and continue carrying bonus discs. They just raised prices on monthy accounts with blu ray capability, so then taking away the bonus discs would tick a lot of people off.

raides

Fox and Disney have been doing this already for the past 5 years in all R4 region countries. They use their own company promotional menu, not the retail menu, and have no retail bonus features outside of trailers.

It seemed to work in R4 countries on a small scale and even spurred piracy in those countries because most rental facilities would get the movie earlier than the retail dvd, because the promotion on the Publisher end was more interested in the sales of retail dvds not the rentals.

So in the long run, if you download your movies instead of buying them, this works out in your favor.

Finkelworth

SOMETIMES I ONLY RENT A DVD FOR THE SPECIAL FEATURES, I ALREADY SAW THE FILM I JUST WANA SEE THE MAKING OF IT OR INTERVIEWS.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO urns!

Sergemeister

Hopefully this trend brings so much discontent that it makes people stop buying or renting DVD's altogether. In effect this will bring the demand for Blu-Ray up and thus the production of Blu will increase bringing down the price for everyone! Yay Commercialism!

hhead

this is not only going to stop people from renting as many movies, but it is going to add to the number being downloaded. if i can go to the store and rent a dvd, just to watch the movie portion, why should i bother. in my mind the point of the DVD is so you can watch the blooper reel, deleted scenes, etc... this is just going to piss disney and fox off more because more people will just pirate flicks...

Enrique Garcia

1) I think another reason why the studios are making this move is because they know people who rent the DVDs are the ones who most often burn copies at home (it's easier to rip a DVD than it is to download the rip online).

2) I don't really care as long as I can get what I want at my local store; my main concern is that if they might see a trend where "bonus" DVDs aren't selling nowhere near as well as regular DVDs and thus special features will disappear altogether :(

Goro

Strip the DVD of all extras, use that extra space for increased bitrate, keep the "Digital Copy", cut the price in half and i'd much rather BUY that than 2-3 disc SEs.

Joe

Two-disc DVDs are already hurting rental enjoyment for me. I rented Bolt from a Redbox because I wanted a good CGI film to test out my new HDTV. I really enjoyed it and wanted to see some features from Lassater on how they made it, but it was all on the second disc. All I got was a short film with Rhino which was disappointing.

Anti-Septic

I dont care really, I rarely watch bonus material on most things. Only on very good movies does bonus material interest me, and then I usually purchase the DVD anyhow.

Anjohl

Well, the way I see it, this is a great idea, because the rental market isn't exaclty comprised of aspiring film students, lol. I think the rental copies shoudl not only be stripped, but simply start the movie as soon as you insert it, like the old VHS tapes, and have the chapters in there, but without a chapter select menu.

codeman38

I just got a rental DVD of _Up_ from Netflix that not only was lacking bonus features, but also was lacking closed captions.

As a viewer with hearing difficulties who actually uses CC, this did not please me at all...

At least Fox's bonus-stripped DVDs still include captioning, and I don't mind those. This, however, is just an insult.

Sam

It's also important to note that the rental of "Up" does not contain the two short films - the one about clouds that aired before the movie, and the new to DVD short about Dug's adventure - that are included even on the single disc version.

However, NONE that I can tell of the Disney commercials have been deleted from the disc, so you still get to slog through all of that.

Way to lose a potential sale, Disney.

DougTheBug

You know what the big problem with this is?! I just rented "Up!" and not only is there not Features (which I couldn't care about) but there are no MENUS, or even Subtitles or Closed Captioning, (which it says it has on the case). This is fucking bullshit. Closed Captioning isn't some fucking feature, its something so people who don't have perfect hearing can enjoy this fucking product. Fuck Disney. Fuck Them In Their Cartoony Ass.

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