Summit Entertainment Having Problems With Blockbuster Video

According to Home Media Magazine, Summit Entertainment is having a problem getting paid from Blockbuster video ( the company has filed for Bankruptcy protection) over Eclipse, Hurt Locker, and Red DVDs.

“Specifically, Summit last November shipped Blockbuster 426,180 DVDs (excluding widescreen) of Eclipse for unit prices ranging from $6 to $20.20 each, in addition to 92,290 copies of the film on Blu-ray Disc (excluding widescreen) for unit prices from $6 to $23.99 each.

Summit, which claims Eclipse was the fourth-biggest home video release of 2010, contends Blockbuster has generated $8.3 million in rental revenue from the shipments.

The studio also has outstanding invoices for 1,710 copies of The Hurt Locker on Blu-ray for $23.99 each, and 1,620 copies of Robin Hood Unrated Blu-ray/DVD combo for $24.99 each.

Separately, Summit last month shipped Blockbuster 294,990 DVD copies (including special editions) of Red at prices of from $6 to $18 each, and 66,480 Blu-ray copies of Red at prices of from $6 to $23.99 each.

In the complaint, Summit said it is “a relatively small company, not one of the ‘Big Six’ media conglomerate ‘major’ movie studios” that it says can more easily accommodate delayed payments.

“It will be a significant hardship for Summit if this receivable is not paid,” read the complaint.”

See the whole story here.

EDITED :Reuters is also now commenting on the story.

“Blockbuster representatives spoke with Summit’s management on a January 28 conference call about unpaid bills for DVDs including the “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” which was Summit’s second-most popular DVD and No. 4 among all studios last year.

“To Summit’s surprise and dismay, the debtors informed Summit that the debtors would not pay Summit with respect to products that were shipped post-petition (after the bankruptcy filing) because the debtors lacked the funds to do so,” said a court document.

Summit’s president, Stephen Nickerson, said in a court document that Blockbuster will take in $8.3 million alone from the “Eclipse” DVD and he called the unpaid bills a “significant hardship” for the small studio.

Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in September, weighed down by its debts and stung by video-on-demand and competitors such as mail-order pioneer Netflix Inc and Redbox Inc, a Coinstar Inc unit that rents movies through kiosks.”

It would appear that Blockbuster obtained the discs well after it filed for protection, at least 3 months. So a question for all you lawyers out there, how does that affect Summit? Did Blockbuster make a deal in bad faith, or is this standard Bankruptcy procedure that Summit should have understood?

Eclipse One of the 2010’s Top DVDs

Screen Junkies has picked Eclipse as one of their top DVD’s of 2010. They also selected The Runaways with Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning.

“The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” In the third installment of “The Twilight Saga,” Victoria is still after Bella and is building an army of newborn vampires to strike against the Cullen’s. For the first time the wolves and vampires unite to fight against a common enemy. Because of the enormous popularity of “The Twilight Saga”, “Eclipse” is one of the best DVDs released in 2010.

Also making the list were other adventure films like Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. Check out the whole list here.

E1 Entertainment Bring on the Wolves

Each year E1 Entertainment does something unique when the Twilight DVDs come out in the UK (they are the UK distributor). This year they brought wolves to London. Below are some photos. They are promising video later today. According to their press release:

Braving the cold this morning, five four-legged couriers made a unique delivery. A pack of wolves has delivered the first batch of DVDs to a retailer in London in the early hours of today prior to the release of the The Twilight Saga: Eclipse which is out on DVD and Blu-ray on Monday 6th December and is set to be a howling success.

Film company Entertainment One has hired five wolves to ensure the safe delivery of the first batch of films to HMV’s Piccadilly store. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse – starring Kristen Stewart, Brit star Robert Pattinson and US talent Taylor Lautner – is set to become one of the biggest home entertainment releases of 2010 thanks to the loyal following of ‘Twi-hards’ – fans of Stephenie Meyer’s series of novels and films.


The wolves, who have been in special training for the task for the past three months, were led by the members of Jacob’s ‘wolf clan’ and walked over 10 miles to the city centre. The furry five-some shocked members of the public as they were spotted walking through the streets of central London holding the DVDs firmly in their mouths.

Wolf handler Trevor Smith commented: “These wolves have been subject to a rigorous training schedule for the past three months to ensure they can safely carry and deliver the DVDs to the stores in time for its release. I must admit it did take a little while to ensure they could hold the DVDs in their mouth without leaving a few holes in it, but we got there in the end.”

E1 Entertainment Senior Product Manager Martin Gough added: “We decided to use wolves to bring the film into London due to their instinct to protect and defend. The film is set to be one of this year’s biggest releases so what better way to ensure the safe delivery of the DVDs into the UK. After all who, besides a vampire, would take on a wolf?”

The third film in the Twilight saga based on Stephenie Meyer’s blockbuster book series, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is packed with passion, action and suspense. With a box office of over £29.5 million it has exceeded both its predecessors in the series. Now The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is coming to DVD and Blu-ray on December 6th 2010.

For New Moon, they showed New Moon to wolves:

For Twilight, they had Edward look-alikes with Twilight contact lens walking around London:

Eclipse DVD Sales Not as High as Twilight or New Moon

Apparently Summit isn’t concerned, it’s all part of a 4-week, holiday roll out with more advertising planned.

According to Home Media magazine:

Eclipse, the third film in the “Twilight” franchise, still has plenty of bite with consumers.

The DVD and Blu-ray Disc of the film, which grossed $300 million in U.S. theaters, went on sale at midnight Friday, Dec. 3, and after two days had already sold some 3 million DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, according to Summit Home Entertainment.

The tally falls short of what either of the first two films did on their respective disc openings, but the marketing strategy is different and the release is expected to have longer legs throughout the holiday season, said Steve Nickerson, president of Summit Home Entertainment.

“With the first two titles, we had massive March opening events involving thousands of retail stores,” Nickerson said. “We were going for a big bang, right out of the gate. This time we are releasing the film during the holiday season, a much more crowded time and one with vastly different consumer shopping patterns. So our whole plan is to look at what we’re doing over a four-week period of time, and not a single night.”

See more on Home Media Mag

Via BAE

What is your Favorite Item on the Eclipse DVD


There are a lot of extra features and commentaries on the Eclipse DVD. As a fan, what is your favorite item, and which Eclipse DVD did you buy? Also did you get the new Destination Fork DVD, if so what did you think?

Hit Fix Interviews David Slade For the Eclispe DVD Release

BryceeclipseHit Fix Spoke to David Slade for the Eclipse DVD release. The conversation gets a little technical, but it’s original material not likely to be rehashed in any other interview.

Was the largest set piece the vampire vs. wolves war scene?

Slade: I think the mountain top battle between Victoria, Edward, Riley, Sethwolf valor battle was probably the biggest most complex set piece. [I had to] make room in our schedule for me to go back and direct the key elements of that fight scene because the fight scene was like a three-act structure story. It’s not just, you know, a fight. It has a beginning, it has a middle, it has an end. It has various character traits that make things happen if they’re good. So, that fight sequence was one where the tree going over was a big part of the plot but was also part of the story because the story enveloped the character. The character of Victoria was that she was an escape artist. She always ran. And she was going to jump. She was going to get somewhere safe. She was always safe. So, a character is feeding into your fight. There’s no description in the book that she jumps into a tree. It was just like, “Well let’s make her jump into a tree because…” and you work that way. You work out the ideas through — she’s going to run away and she’s just to live another day but he’s going to have to find a way to bring her back with words. Still the character — even though it’s a fight, you know? – And then at a certain point he’s got to use words to goad her into the proximity it’s going to take to fight, you know? It’s a very, very structured thing. We didn’t shoot it for days on end but it was certainly one of the most complex things to engineer.  The actors went into training for it all and it was one of those things where I was solely kind of every day hammering away at until we shot it. And I think because there is a point where all of these things I’m talking about just randomly appear. They happen.
Slade: You know, in the end it was great in the first screening to hear everyone scream and cheer when Victoria dies. That worked.”

Twilight Actors at Eclipse DVD Release Events

There isn’t much info out there, but this is what we know so far:

David Slade will be appearing at the Dark Delicacies store 3512 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank, CA 91505December 4th at 6:00 p.m. This is a numbered event and DVD must be purchased at Dark Delicacies. See their website or call the store for more info.

Julia Jones will be in La Push at a fundraiser they have only 40 DVD’s available that she will sign. The cost is  $75 with the mark-up going to charity that helps the kids of the Quileute Nation. Full details here.

Julia Jones event number 2: Seattle Art Museum will present a free screening of “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” in honor of the film’s DVD release Saturday. Actress Julia Jones, who plays Quileute tribal member Leah Clearwater in the movie, will be present for a Q & A.

The museum is currently showing the exhibit “Behind the Scenes: The Real Story of the Quileute Wolves,” about the Quileute Nation’s culture, which includes a video of adults and teens commenting on the tribe’s portrayal in the “Twilight” movies. 6 p.m. Dec. 4; admission to the film is free but reservations are required at www.seattleartmuseum.org/calendar/calendar.asp.

Tinsel Korey will be in the Los Angeles area. She tweeted “U excited bout the EclipseDVD release? I am! 2 celebrate I’m going 2 b @blockbuster @LarchmontLA. The street where my Twilight journey began 🙂 Did you know… My audition 4 Twilight: New Moon was @ a casting office on Larchmont Street! Tis where I started my Twilight adventure :)”

Peter Facinelli, Dan Cudmore, Charlie Bewley, Alex Meraz, Chaske Spencer, and Booboo Stewart are all going to be at the Orlando Twilight convention next weekend. Great chance to get a DVD signed, plus get out of the cold Northern weather! The hotel is the HILTON Walt Disney World Resort Hotel hard to go wrong with Disney and Twilight.

Hillywood Parody actors will be appearing in two different Walmarts in Las Vegas. Full details on their website.

EW Interviews David Slade

Entertainment Weekly has their interview with David Slade posted.  Having watched the Blu-Ray myself, I wondered why there weren’t more deleted scenes.  In particular, I wanted to see the scene where Bella envisions her life with Jacob.  Slade addressed this issue and others  in the interview.

Why don’t we see all the deleted scenes described in the commentaries on the DVD?
Stewart describes the first thing she shot on the movie — a “fairly ridiculous” sequence in which she imagined herself in the fireside flashback as the Quileute elder chief’s third wife, who stabbed and sacrificed herself to distract the vengeful female vampire attacking the village. Meyer and Godfrey describe people laughing when they saw it. Understandable that they would choose not to include it. Ditto the scene Bella imagined after her kiss with Jacob on the mountain. She saw them having grown old together. “There were a lot of issues with prosthetic makeup,” Slade says with a groan, then a laugh. “It gives me a bit of a shiver, as a filmmaker. As an idea, it was wonderful. What happens with a film is it becomes organic and it grows, and it tells you what it wants, and it was screaming loudly, ‘I don’t want that!’ to me.” Another scene described in the commentaries never actually got shot. “Stephenie really wanted to see Edward as a young man again, and we had this vision scripted for a while where Bella and he are together in Victorian times, as a kind of reverie,” Slade says.

To read the full interview, visit EW’s site.

A Wedding For Bella and Edward in Eclipse?

Next Movie has shared part of their upcoming David Slade interview. (In case you are wondering, every media outlet in town interviewed David Slade during the last two days and their media embargo just lifted.) David shared this surprising tidbit:

“…according to David Slade, the director of the “Twilight Saga: Eclipse” adaptation, it[the wedding] might have come a little earlier on the big screen.

“We discussed a lot of the things at the script-writing stage — at one point, we were even going to shoot the wedding at the end of [“Eclipse”] but we knew there was another film coming,” Slade tells NextMovie exclusively.

“We knew that a lot of that could go into the next film.  And we just made the most concise version of this story that we could.”

Check it out on Next Movie.

Collider Interviews David Slade for the Eclipse DVD Release

David SladesetAs usual there is great stuff over at Collider. Christina Radish, who used to be at IESB, is now over at Collider. Christina has always provided great Twilight coverage no matter what site she works for:

“Earlier today, Collider had the opportunity to do an exclusive interview with director David Slade, in which he talked about all of the special features and extras that even the most hardcore fans are sure to enjoy, how every aspect of making the film was daunting, that one of his favorite scenes was the kitchen scene between Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Charlie (Billy Burke), and how he doesn’t judge a film by it’s financial or critical success, but rather how closely it achieves his original vision. He also said that he’s currently narrowing down what he’s going to be working on next, and that all of his choices are very different from his previous work.

Question: What will fans get most excited about, in regard to the special features and extras that you’ve selected for this DVD?

DAVID SLADE: You know, I don’t know. That’s bad. I made the film and haven’t even seen these things, except to approve them. What I will say is that I think it’s a point worth making that, for a film like this, because of the fan base, I liken it to a subculture. It’s not quite punk rock, but it’s a fan culture, like Star Wars fans. It’s a positive thing and I’ve always been very, very supportive of fan cultures. I’m a fan of all kinds of things. With a DVD, you want something you can own, you can watch, you can come to grips with and you can explore. It’s something larger than the film, when it’s going out to a fan base like this. So, I guess that’s my answer. I hope that they like all of it.

The thing that I remember doing myself is the commentary on the deleted scenes. I don’t do commentaries on films because A) I’m not very good at it and B) it’s an odd thing that I discovered, on my first film, that you go through this really intense experience of making a film and then you sit in a little room with a monitor and you reduce the thing to a bunch of silly anecdotes. It’s really unfulfilling and I’ve never really enjoyed listening to them anyway, so I just don’t do them. I’ve made a point, since then, of not doing them.

But, one of the things I thought was important, particularly because of this fan base and because of how much stock they put into the stories, was just to talk about the stuff we took out – that we shot and we didn’t put in – and the reasoning behind it. I felt it needed a bit of justification. There were some scenes that I actually really liked and would like to have put them in. And who knows? They may be favorites of people within the fan cultures. Film becomes a living organism. After awhile, it begins to tell you what it needs and you’re usually best listening.”

See more on Collider