Expectations management
November 8, 2007

But, lo and behold, Sony came out and reported a sensible 130,000 units of Spidey 3 sold in six days. They’re claiming that’s a record for the studio—not even the industry’s top Blu-ray title bow to date, which probably goes to Warner’s 300 (though Warner never exactly broken down the number between formats).

Interesting stuff from David Bishop in Susanne Ault’s story , in which the Sony chief talks about shipping more than 400,000 units of Spidey BD with no real worries of returns because the studio is filling a new pipeline for high-def.

In terms of standard DVD, Sony has not even released a first-week sell-through number for the latest Spidey installment, focusing the discussion instead on managing expectations for the third entry in the franchise.

Sony’s temperance about numbers might strike some as a sign of title weakness, but sources put the total first-week DVD sales at somewhere north of 4 million, when using the every-last-unit accounting method that has become the norm among studios. A solid hit, for sure, if no record breaker.

If Sony is correct about the correlation between box-office ($337 million for Spidey 3) and home entertainment home runs weakening as the sequels multiply, moreover, one has to wonder what that means for the other big three-peats to come: Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and DreamWorks Animation/Paramount’s Shrek the Third, due Tuesday.

Across WGA strike-plagued Los Angeles, studios are considering, and in some cases, beginning to do some expectation management of their own.

Just weeks ago, at the end of the third quarter, many execs were predicting the fourth quarter would be big enough to make up ground lost earlier in the year and draw 2007 ahead of 2006 revenue. Maybe that was a little over-optimistic. Maybe not.

But in sales projections, as in life, it’s always better to underpromise and overdeliver.

Posted by Marcy Magiera on November 8, 2007 | Comments (0)