An addendum on this post noted that War, Inc, the satire co-written by and starring John Cusack which I loathed but which has become something of a surprise spring hit, was scheduled to come out on DVD tomorrow after just seven weeks in theaters. I wrote:

War Inc['s DVD release] is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post…

Ah, but then the target moved: shortly after that post was published, I got an email from David Hudson informing me that the film’s DVD release has been bumped to October. The move happened apparently quite suddenly––a number of outlets have published reviews of the film in recent days, ostensibly pegged to the original DVD release date, as the film’s theater count stayed steady this past weekend. Box Office Mojo currently has the title up as a release for tomorrow, although Amazon has changed their sales page to reflect a new release date of October 14.

So why the sudden switch? It could be due to a combination of a number of factors: the film is still doing sort of okay in theaters (though it doesn’t look like it has the legs to grow beyond its current count of 33 screens, it only dropped about 12% last week, to earn a per screen average about equivalent to that of certified summer sleeper The Visitor); there also may be a case to be made that it’ll be easier to sell DVDs of a political satire in the weeks immediately leading up to the election, than in relative lull in the campaign season (and a holiday week, no less).

But the exact thing that looked sort of brilliant about the seven week window plan––that First Look would be able to capitalize on more or less organic serendipity about the film, due to the fact that Cusack’s tireless talking head campaigning on its behalf has sort of worked theatrically, and would thus not have to spend extra money on a campaign surrounding the DVD––now looks like money down the drain. If the DVD reviews to come out in the past week are any indication (Steve Erickson called War, Inc “a lowest-common-denominator comedy, the equivalent of a Larry the Cable Guy vehicle for readers of The Nation“), the distributor will once again be forced to rely on creativity to sell their DVD in lieu of critical support. And creativity costs money.