’12 Years a Slave’ Gets Oscar Bump on Digital HD
The halo of a Best Picture Oscar win extends even to the relatively new Digital HD release window, as “12 Years a Slave” is discovering.
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment reported a 200% increase in post-Oscar Monday sales for the Oscar versus week-ago figures. Sales were already strong since “Slave” arrived Feb. 18th on Digital HD, an increasingly popular two-week period prior to the start of the traditional home-video window for electronic sell-through across platforms ranging from iTunes to Comcast Xfinity.
The studio described “Slave” as Fox’s highest converting title ever, second only to “The Wolverine” in terms of sales through two weeks in the Digital HD window. A more direct comparison for the studio comes from another multi-Oscar winner last year, “Life of Pi,” which was trending 41% behind where “Slave” is now at the same point in the sales cycle.
While pre- and post-Oscar buzz does its own heavy lifting, “Slave” was likely helped along by a coordinated marketing strategy to raise awareness for its Digital HD availability across TV, online and social media, not to mention significant promotion on the home pages of participating EST storefronts.
“Slaves” made its debut on DVD and Blu-Ray on Tuesday.
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