Fox Launches Second Demographically-targeted Specialty Division with FoxFaith
News Corp.'s Fox Filmed Entertainment today announced plans to target the Christian audience with the formal launch of the FoxFaith Home Enertainment Division.
FoxFaith will acquire up to twelve films a year, with a minimum of six theatrical releases a year under partnerships with AMC Theatres and Carmike Cinemas. The label will target evangelical Christians, a group whose beliefs have traditionally been at odds with secular Hollywood fare (including some of the racier content seen on Fox's broadcast network). The label has also partnered with the Dove Foundation, a non-profit that offers seals of approval to qualifying films free of offensive content.
Productions will be based on bestselling Christian fiction and will have production budgets under $5 million. Recent updates indicate they will be acquisitions, and not studio productions Additionally, the films will receive marketing support nearly equal to the production budgets, a significant figure for marketing low-budget films. This will complement Fox’s already hefty grassroots database of 90,000 congregations and 14 million evangelical households.
As we reported here over a year ago, FoxFaith has been making major inroads into the Christian marketplace in the DVD arena. Since the launch of the FoxFaith initiative last June, Fox has shipped over 30 million faith-based DVDs. As the DVD distributor for ‘Passion of the Christ,’ fox has sold an impressive 15 million units and established a considerable competitive advantage in marketing to the Christian community.
Another interesting element to this announcement: As opposed to the rest of Hollywood’s alignment of their theatrical and home video divisions along genre lines (Foreign, American Independent, Horror, etc.), Fox is throwing that paradigm out the window by aligning them along demographic lines, first with Fox Atomic, and now FoxFaith. It’s doesn't seem like much of a stretch to imagine a FoxAsian or FoxWomen specialty unit. After all, this model has been put to the test via specialty cable networks for several decades, but the web has given the model even more promise. With the lower cost of marketing to a known cohort, the centralization of these communities in online social networks, and the ease of building up reusable grassroots databases over time, Fox may have discovered a winning formula for combating the fracturing of the mass audience. The Weinsteins Company has placed a bet on this model as well with Our Stories Films, a specialty studio catering to the African-American audience.
Wal-Mart Accelerating Digital Movie Download Efforts
 According to recent reports on CNNMoney.com, Wal-Mart is ramping up its movie download service efforts amidst the recent launch of Amazon and Apple’s services.
The single largest seller of DVDs in the world, Wal-Mart accounts for upwards of 40 percent of all DVD sales, mainly from highly popular new releases from the studios. The article speculates that the move is part of Wal-Mart’s effort to maintain this dominance.
Wal-Mart is still working out the pricing and delivery options for the service, which may include free or discounted downloads with purchase. Downloads would be available at walmart.com, and the company is also considering in-store burning kiosks as well.
Wal-Mart’s moves come just weeks after it was widely reported that they threatened not to sell titles of companies making download deals with Apple. Earlier this year, Wal-Mart refused to carry Disney’s 'High School Musical' after it appeared on iTunes prior to release in stores.
Warner Bows 'The Lake House' Simultaneously on DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray
Today Warner Home Video announced that they will be releasing 'The Lake House' simultaneously on standard DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray formats.
With a September 26th street date, Warner will be the first studio to release titles in all formats. They will also be releasing the film as a combo disc, with a high definition DVD on one side and SD DVD on the other side, priced at $39.99. The Blu-ray version will be available for $34.99 SRP. And a standard DVD will cost $28.98. The bonus materials will be available on all versions, though Warner did not disclose if they would be in high definition on the HD DVD and Blue-ray versions.
'The Lake House' is a time-travel romance starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, and is a remake of a recent Korean film. Warner may be banking on the geek appeal of the film’s plot and Keanu Reeve’s Matrix pedigree to appeal to the early adopters who are currently the biggest segment of the high definition player owners.
In theatrical release this past summer, 'The Lake House' took in $52.3 million domestically and $49 million overseas, coming in at #38 for 2006.
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