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TESCO CONFIRMS PHASING OUT
“STILL PLENTIFUL OPPORTUNITIES”
HMV POISED TO INCREASE MARKET SHARE
NO TIME TO DIE AHEAD OF SPECTRE AT RETAILER
HMV LOOOKS AHEAD TO 2022…
…AS JANUARY BRINGS BIG HITTERS
WINDOWS MESSAGING MUST BE CLEARER
ZAVVI LOOKS FORWARD TO MOR CATALOGUE SUCCESSES
BRITS BOOST TO BUSINESS
OSCAR NOMINATIONS SEE NETFLIX SCORE
DESCRIPTION FOR ARROW’S HOUSE
BBC GOES GREEN
REEL SUCCESS
BACK AGAIN
AT THE MOVIES
AT THE MOVIES
TWEET OF THE WEEK
TRAILERS OF THE WEEK
It was a good week for… hmv, Zavvi, picking up market share as another grocer steps away from physical media…
It was a bad week for… Commiserations to all those snubbed in the Oscar nominations… As its shelves slowly begin to look more and more depleted, Tesco has confirmed the news, widespread among the industry, that it is exiting physical media and is “phasing out” products such as films, TV and music in the coming months. There’s no full timescale offered by the supermarket giant in the official statement issued by the company’s HQ, but, as anyone who’s popped into one of its many outlets recently will have noted, its stock is now running low. The spokesperson told The Raygun: "As more customers move towards digital entertainment, over the last month we have begun to phase out some products in our entertainment range, focusing instead on ranges where we see the highest demand from customers such as homeware and outdoor products.”
We’ll have more in the news in the coming weeks, but this week, we thought we’d concentrate on the positive retail experience and we’ve discussed how it’s going at length with a couple of key retailers still putting their full weight behind home entertainment, hmv, on the high street and online, and zavvi.com, the online retailer currently excelling in the space for serious film and television lovers. There was no official statement from elsewhere, but as trade association BASE chief executive Liz Bales said after Sainsbury’s announcement it was pulling out in summer 2021: “The physical home entertainment market has shown amazing resilience over the last 12 months with consumers seeking out TV, catalogue content and premium formats, but there is no doubt that the opportunity to own new film releases excites consumers and drives significant DVD and Blu-ray sales. While our colleagues will miss working with the Sainsbury’s team in the imminent future, UK consumers still have plentiful opportunities with UK grocers, entertainment specialist retailers, online retailers and non-traditional retail locations to continue to enjoy an experience we all know and love – excitedly grabbing a copy of a film you’ve been desperate to see and heading home for a spontaneous movie night in.”
One retailer that stands to make gains as others decrease or axe their home entertainment offerings is specialist High Street and online retailer hmv. We caught up with the resurgent retailer to see how its trading had been, both in 2021 and into this year, with the company’s head of video John Delany assessing its recent and current performance. He said: "It's great to see customer demand for physical continue even though the grocers are stepping back from home entertainment and physical media. The share increases we have seen recently prove the customers will seek out physical discs on the High Street as well as online. We’re the only retailer offering the full range, from the biggest releases to collectable limited editions, making them available in whichever format a customer wants them. With new customers visiting us, they’ll find all formats supported, from 4K to Blu-ray, as well DVD, and they'll see more catalogue and drafting titles around those new releases too – providing a unique customer experience to truly shop across the entire category. They’ll find a better overall offer and the kind of catalogue to inspire them to discover even more stories they will love.” Delany added that retailers devoting less space – and attention – to home ent meant that hmv enjoyed a bigger sales and market share for No Time To Die ahead of the last 007 entry Spectre, five years previously.
No Time To Die was, of course, a key highlight of 2021, and hmv’s John Delany recounted a year like no other at the retailer, with its stores shuttered from January through to mid-April. “We continued to trade on our website, with more compelling offers and we made it easier to react to consumer demand. We had to pivot again as a business. We also put together a plan for the reopening delivering an immediate market impact when they did and customers showed their love for shops again. January to April is a long time, there were a lot of releases and people could have gotten out of the habit of buying physical products, but what we saw upon reopening was a huge pent-up demand, customers flocked back to our shops and the week we reopened was one of our highest weeks for market share ever. It was heartening to see how much people valued our in-store experience. Then being able to deliver one or two big releases regularly right through until Christmas to support the demand of our customers felt great.”
And on to 2022 and hmv is looking forward to the year ahead, with Spider-Man: No Way Home leading the charge. As Delany said: “Bond was just incredible, it set a really high bar for other big films on the slate to aspire to. But No Way Home is a brilliant film, it’s more than just Spider-Man 3, it’s effectively like Spider-Man 8, or arguably Avengers 5. It’s the first really big event film for Marvel following Endgame and you can see the appetite for the huge theatrical experience that we also saw with Bond, so we’re really looking forward to that. Then there’s the likes of The Godfather Trilogy in 4K too, the best version of the much loved heritage lines - truly made for the fans. It’s another all-time classic trilogy on 4K and we’ve seen amazing results with Lord Of The Rings and Indiana Jones.” As he added, hmv’s subtle shift that has seen it adding much more pop culture items to its music and video mix, mean that there’s more product for a title like Spider-Man that customers can buy into beyond the film too. That pop culture kit, including action figures and merchandise, is also helping teach kids about physical media. “It brings in a younger audience, maybe they haven’t even got the money yet, but they’ve grown up with streaming but for film or tv they love the most, they’re looking to buy a physical edition to go with their merchandising and clothing.” He said 2022, thanks to strong releases – not least the Monday that saw three biggies –Dune, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Last Night In Soho all landing on the same day – also bodes well. “We were blessed with three really big titles on the same day and we were really lucky to be able to offer points of difference for two, with an exclusive@hmv 4K Dune Steelbook and an exclusive@hmv First Edition for Last Night In Soho – both of which sold out. We saw really good results for all three, it was a great week. But what we haven’t seen yet, is whether it’s better to have three on the same day, or one every week, due to the different windowing from distributors means you can go two or three weeks without a big title, then have three on the same day. We haven’t had enough of these types of release weeks to be able to say with certainty whether it's ultimately a good thing for the category overall. You may get someone buying two or three releases, but customers may be less likely to shop the catalogue which might impact there. It’s something we will be monitoring, but we understand that for distributors it’s about getting them out as soon as they can at the moment and we are thrilled to have such amazing fresh content coming through for our customers in 2022.”
And what was he hoping for from the industry? :There are some key things,” he said, “There are so many options and different windows, we have to be really clear as an industry about these windows and when consumers can own them on disc. We need to see really strong awareness, with really clear communication for the physical announcements. The messaging about windows can get lost, add confusion and actually compromise choices for some of the most loyal fans in the category . Last year we saw windowing go anywhere between eight and 16 weeks from theatrical. We haven't seen any learnings from the studios yet, so we’d like to see studios share the data so we can capture the moment for the perfect home ent window and create a best in class model.” He also said the 4k strategy needed looking at too, believing that many 4K catalogue reissues - from both studios and labels - miss an opportunity for standard 4K version alongside the collectors edition, targeting both types of collectors and making the overall release much bigger.
Speaking of retail, while discussing Tesco and the state of retail, we also spoke to The Hut Group, whose zavvi.com website is still one of the most forward-thinking retailers in the UK, one that is always trying to drive the market forward. fIt has excelled in its catalogue efforts, not least with pushing exclusive Steelbooks and other product. And, as the country emerges from lockdown, it is starting to see a renewed wave of interest in the bigger new release titles coming to market, as well as building on the strong catalogue results it has enjoyed over the pandemic years. And it said that distributors need to work with both elements, new release and catalogue, going forward, ensuring the product flows on both side, with a renewed focus on catalogue following its success over the past few years. The Hut Group’s head of buying for Blu-ray, toys and collectibles Steve Cook told The Raygun: “Business is good and I expect this to continue. We have had some solid results on Eternals and Encanto this week, and notable success last month with Venom and Ghostbusters. Plus Bond just keeps on selling! It’s great to see a lot of new release, but also after a long period of mainly catalogue sales I’m really excited to see what new catalogue product 2022 brings especially as we’ve all seen some very unique and collectable product from the studios and labels over the last two years that have driven the sales through a very tricky period, therefore we all need that focus to remain and continue to capitalise on that trend.”
As an aside to the hmv coverage above, it’s interesting to note too that the retailer enjoyed a spike in sales this week on the back of the BRITs music awards, held with the usual accompanying media fanfare and online brouhaha and screened live on ITV. Chief among its successes in terms of post-awards interest and sales were Dave, with the homegrown rapper enjoying an increase of 650 per cent on sales of his album We’re All Alone In This Together, with Sam Fender (248 per cent leap for his Seventeen Going Under LP) and Little Simz among other big winners. hmv md Phil Halliday said: “Every year the BRITs help introduce the best in British music to new audiences, and it’s brilliant to see Little Simz and Dave win new fans following their incredible performances. Adele, Ed Sheeran and Sam Fender all topped the charts last year, but even these huge acts have seen a big sales jump as a result.”
The retailer – and other outlets – will be hoping for a similar awards boost with the Oscars due to take place at the end of March, and the Academy Awards nominees have been announced, with the next few months seeing the jostling among the chief candidates across the numbers categories. Much has been made already of the snubs, not least the Marvel fans who are up in arms about Spider-Man – No Way Home not getting a nod for Best Picture, so we won’t go into too much detail, you can see the full nominations here. Biggest nomination haul was for Netflix’s The Power Of The Dog, which is already up on the streaming service, which earned a dozen nods. It may, along with other key Netflix nominees The Lost Daughter (three) and Don’t Look Up (four) end up on Blu-ray – other big Netflix titles (think Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman) have made their way ro physical media via the Sony Pictures Home Entertainment-distributed Criterion Collection. With 10 nominations, Dune, currently sitting pretty at number one in the Official Film Chart after finally taking over the top slot from Ghostbusters: Afterlife, should enjoy a longer shelf life on home entertainment formats ahead of the awards, while West Side Story, the next biggest nominee in terms of numbers (seven in total), will arrive on Disney+ on March 2, the studio announced this week, timing the announcement to tie in with the news of the nominations. Disney earned a mammoth 23 Oscar nominations, with all of them set to arrive on Disney+ at some stage, although the likes of Nightmare Alley (four nods, including Best Picture), have yet to be announced. More on these and the other nominees ahead of the big day on March 27…
The wonderful Arrow Video imprint continues to lead the way across the board, its innovative launch and subsequent growth has laid out the blueprint for boutique labels in this country and beyond. Its latest innovation sees the newest release on the label, classic 80s VHS-era horror Don’t Go In The House, becoming the first title from the company to come with audio description for the visually impaired. Commenting on the AD, Matt Jarman, who oversaw the project at Bad Princess Productions, said: “It was a perfect candidate for audio description as it doesn't move too quickly, get overloaded with visual information or feature a great deal of dialogue. It is a mid-paced portrait of a character's descent into madness where the house itself is one of the main characters. It was a pleasure to describe as there was plenty of room to add descriptive details about the house without the description becoming too intense or wordy. I hope the visually impaired community will enjoy this film and the audio description as much as I did making it.” Sigrid Larsen, from The Engine House Media Services which handles post production for Arrow, added: “We’re excited to add a video nasty to our library of audio descriptions!”
This writer can remember one day, sometime around 20 or more years ago, working in Tower Records’ flagship store in Piccadilly Circus, one of the country’s most desirable retail locations, on the busiest Saturday of the year, just before Christmas. It was the year David Attenborough’s first Blue Planet series had aired and come out on DVD, and the public were going mad for it. Much of that Saturday was spent replenishing the shelves with copies of the much-requested and much-bought title, one of the year’s biggest. Attenborough has been a strong home entertainment proposition for some five decades now; we’ve met him at numerous events, not just for BBC Studios, interviewed him and seen him supporting numerous releases. And the run continues on Monday February 14 with the release, from BBC Studios, of his latest outing, Green Planet. Comment n the release came from Rob Crowe, sales manager for BBC Studios consumer products, who said: “I know I’m not alone in saying that for me, it’s always one of the TV highlights of the year to have a new landmark natural history documentary narrated by the wonderful Sir David Attenborough. The Green Planet is just as fantastic as you’d expect, turning towards the Earth’s abundant and diverse plant life for the latest of these iconic series, and it’s incredibly exciting to have this coming to DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD.”
Our old chum Jon Spira, one of the UK’s foremost examples of the Quentin Tarantino route to filmmaking – from video store staffer (and later owner) to director – is back with another new project. The former Blockbuster employee, who subsequently ran the Videosyncratic store in Oxford, the subject of one of the definitive tomes about working in a rental shop (you an get the deluxe version here and it is a huge recommend from us), has become a notable director in recent years following the success of his earlier feature projects such as Anyone Can Play Guitar and Elstree 1976, as well as recent outing Hollywood Bulldogs. The latter, covered here on The Raygun as well as his previous outings, was picked up exclusively by UK-based streamer BritBox and his latest outing, Reel Britannia, is now heading to the same service. While Hollywood Bulldogs charted the history of the British stuntman, the newest takes on an even more ambitious subject, analysing the history of modern British cinema from 1960 to 2010. The list of interviewees and subjects is hugely impressive – taking in the likes of Terry Gilliam, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Hanif Kureishi, Mike Newell, Simon Beaufoy, David Leland and Terence Davies. Spira told The Raygun: “Reel Britannia is by far our most ambitious project to date and it has been a blast. We’ve got a really fresh take on the evolution of modern British cinema. We’ve been interviewing the absolutely legendary figures and uncovering so many great stories. From A Taste of Honey to Sex Lives of the Potato Men, we’re looking at everything. We hope to shine a light on some forgotten heroes and masterpieces whilst celebrating the classics and explaining how it seems we got to wherever it is we are today.”
Playing at IMAX cinemas over the weekend (from February 10 to 13) and nationwide from February 18, is The Beatles: Get Back – The Rooftop Concert, the feature that contains the full concert played by the Fab Four over London’s West End in 1969. The release follows hot on the heels of the docuseries Get Back, Peter Jackson’s extensive look at the recording of the album, and ahead of the physical release of the series (it’s due on February 28), keeping the interest in Get Back high. Director/producer Peter Jackson said: “I’m thrilled that the rooftop concert from The Beatles: Get Back is going to be experienced in IMAX, on that huge screen, it’s The Beatles’ last concert, and it’s the absolute perfect way to see and hear it”. “Ever since Peter Jackson’s beautiful and illuminating docuseries debuted, we’ve heard non-stop from fans who want to experience its unforgettable rooftop performance in IMAX,” said Megan Colligan, president of IMAX Entertainment. “We are so excited to partner with Disney to bring ‘Get Back’ to an entirely new stage and give Beatles fans everywhere a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch and hear their heroes in the unrivalled sight and sound of IMAX.”
AT THE MOVIES
The rock and pop biopic trend continues, with Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocket Man kicking off all kinds of films about the life and times of rock superstars. Latest on the block is from Paramount, which is now backing a biopic based on the life of global reggae superstar Bob Markey. The as-yet-untitled film is being supported by the Rasta’s family, with wife and offspring Rita, Ziggy and Cedella, with King Richard helmer Reinaldo Marcus Green in the director’s chair. And, after a year-long search, the Marley has been found too – Kingsley Ben-Adir, who played Malcolm X in One Night In Miami, has been cast to play the Jamaican legend.
Talking of biopics, next up is the newest from Michael Mann, with the noted director putting together a film telling the the tale of motoring legend Enzo Ferrari. And the driver turned car manufacturer is being played by another driver – Adam Driver – getting in the swing of things again in Italy following his starring role in House Of Gucci. The film will also star Penelope Cruz and Shailene Woodley. It will begin shooting in Italy in May, with STXfilms distributing worldwide. The director said; “Being able to have these wonderfully talented artists, actors Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley, bring to life these unique characters on location in Modena and the Emilia-Romagna is a vision fulfilled,.”
Buyers and critics alike have been heading to Berlin (or joining in virtually) for the film festival and accompanying film market and the biggest deal this year – in fact, the biggest deal ever at the EFM – has seen Sony Pictures take worldwide rights to Tom Hanks comedy A Man Called Otto. The film, which follows a cantankerous man who keeps a watchful eye on the neighbourhood, but slowly softens as he befriends a family, has been picked up for a whopping $60 million. “What an amazing all-star constellation of talent: Tom Hanks in an iconic role and an exceptional director in Marc Forster; outstanding producers in Rita Wilson, Gary Goetzman and Fredrik Wikström Nicastro; exquisite screenplay from David Magee; a worldwide best-selling book; and our long-time partner, SF Studios,” Tom Rothman, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures’ Motion Picture Group, told US trade Deadline. “Elizabeth Gabler, myself and Sony have had the privilege of working with all of these giants before, but this time we feel like we hit the lottery.”
TWEET OF THE WEEK
Follow us on www.twitter.com/theraygun…
TRAILERS OF THE WEEK
More Super Bowl next week, but here’s the Doctor…
It’s a yes from us…
(In Alan Partridge voice) JURASSIC PARK
Big buzz around this one…
Three-pointer of a series due from Sky…
This is what Men are good for
THE OBLIGATORY GDPR BIT
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