I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

The DVD is officially supposed to come out on January 26th in the US, and is available for pre-order right now on Amazon, but there are a ton of places you can buy it or watch it now. I am hearing from multiple people that:

-The actual physical DVD is already on shelves in parts of Canada

-It’s out on Ninjavideo

-It’s out on the Playstation network

-You can watch it now with Amazon’s “Buy and watch now,” in some parts of the US and with certain ISP’s.

-It’s shipping on Netflix

-And yes, like all movies, this movie is available on Torrent sites, which means you can pirate it.

Instead of pretending the piracy elephant in room doesn’t exist, I will address my thoughts on it. Now, these are my thoughts and my thoughts alone, and do not represent the views of Darko, Fox, or probably anyone else working on this movie:

OF COURSE I want us to sell as many DVD’s as possible for numerous reasons, the first being that if we sell millions of DVD’s, then we get into profitability, and that means we start getting checks. Which is nice. But what’s even more important to me than the money, is that selling millions of DVD’s means two things: 1. People like the movie, and 2. we will be able to make sequels.

We did poorly theatrically because we failed at marketing and distribution. Across the board we failed–our strategy was a flawed one, and we didn’t execute as well as was necessary, and many of our marketing techniques and assumptions were wrong, and flat out, we did not have anywhere near enough money to execute the strategy we tried to execute. Granted, even though we were trying something that is for all intents and purposes impossible in this day and age–a truly independent distribution–I still thought we could pull it off. Maybe if everything had be done perfectly we could have, but that is not what happened.

But none of that means anything about the movie itself. The movie itself is a very different thing than the distribution and marketing, and I think we made a great movie, something that can be like a Donnie Darko or Boondock Saints or Office Space and find an audience and commercial success after it’s theatrical run.

But in order to do that, this movie needs to be seen by as many people as possible. If that means buying the DVD, if that means renting it from Netflix, if that means you buy it used, if that means you watch a friends copy, whatever–I want as many people as possible to watch the movie, however they have to watch it. I would prefer people pay, but I am not going to pretend that it’s not out there for free on the internet, because it is. And I am not going to pretend that some people aren’t going to download it, because they are, and if by downloading it for free and watching, then someone decides they like it and buy the DVD, that is awesome. Or by downloading it and watching it, someone loves it and tells 100 people, many of whom see it and buy it, that is great. If pirating means it gets seen by more people than would have otherwise seen it, then, well–I’m not going to be pissed about that, because I believe it will, in the end, sell more DVD’s and be more profitable for everyone involved.

There is plenty of precedent for this in movies, and one in my life too: My book started off pretty decently for a book, and on the back of my website fanbase, sold 70k copies in its first year. That is very solid for a book, but nothing spectacular. Four years later, I have now sold over 1 million books and the book has become a classic. That massive and exponential increase in sales happened not because I tried to control my content, but because of two things: 1. Positive word of mouth about the product, and 2. I gave away a ton of it at my website, so people could see if they liked it. I hope the movie can follow a similar trajectory, and if it does it partially because piracy helped people learn about it, well–I’ll take success however it comes.

Some other notes:

-When it drops, it should be out in pretty much any normal store that sells DVD’s; Target, Best Buy, Blockbuster, etc, etc, as well as of course online.

-No Blu-ray: There will be no Blu-Ray of this movie, at least not right now. If the DVD sells really well, then we will not only do a Blu-Ray, but we’ll add a commentary track with me and Nils (and maybe even the real SlingBlade, which would be funny as hell).

-Added value on the DVD: The DVD does have deleted scenes from the movie. I have to be honest, I haven’t even seen the deleted scenes as they are laid out on the DVD yet, but I have seen them all in the editing room, and like pretty much all deleted scenes–they are deleted for a reason.

-Easter Egg: You may remember this post about the big easter egg in the movie. Well, it’s still there, and it’s still my phone number. Now look, because of this I get SO MANY CALLS I don’t really answer calls from numbers that aren’t already programmed into my phone, but sometimes I do respond to texts. NOT ALWAYS, but if I am in the mood or bored, I will. So if you get a response, it’s from me.

-Some other things, unrelated to the movie:

1. I will have an update about my next book, Assholes Finish First, probably on Tuesday or Wednesday. I am in NYC right now meeting with my publisher to sort out final details.

2. Lots of cool things coming this year, the best way to find out about them for now is to follow me on Twitter. TuckerMax.com will be undergoing a big site re-design soon, but until then, Twitter, or even Facebook, are easiest.