Simon Pegg and director Robert B. Weide made a little movie called How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, but the irony is that its the North American distributors of the film are giving a far better example of Alienating and losing friends. Pegg and Weide are not happy. In fact, they would prefer you DON’T buy their movie.
Seems that all the extra work they did for the bonus features will appear on the Region 2 release, but the Region 1 release? Not so much.
Weide in an official press release. “Simon and I worked very hard to make sure the DVD would be packed with bonus material. The British distributors (Paramount) solicited our input and included all of the extras. Sadly, the American distributors (MGM/Fox) locked us out of the process and managed to leave off most of the bonus material.”
I can really appreciate Pegg and Weide going public on this. This will have one of two results, if not both.
First, this elevates the two of them to Firefly cast status of fanservice. Their reaction seems to come directly from their desire for fans to enjoy their work as much as they did making it. They want to share with those who appreciate the film. They are steamed that it would be ok for the UK fans, but not the North American audience. Awesome of them to go to bat for the fans!
Secondly, this could rally into a fan back lashing against the distributor causing them to reconsider their efforts. The fans buy movies because they love them. And DVD’s contain stuff about the movies that are fun and interesting that you couldn’t experience in the theater therefore making it worthwhile to even bother picking up the damn thing to begin with!
Or not.
Just sayin.
I love Pegg, I saw this movie strictly because he was in it, and it fucking sucked.
Pegg is set up as Scotty in the new Star Trek for at least two more films, as long as it does well at the box office.
Simon Pegg doesn’t need Hollywood really, unless he wants to be a Hollywood star.
And as for deleted scenes, unless they are put back in to the film I rarely watch them on DVDs.
Many films that do poorly at the boxoffice recover a portion of that loss in DVD sales.
Maybe they feel that the bonus features (which include those things they were forced to remove) would be a lure to get people to review the dvd.
Just sayin.
I think Zuke’s right. Not a good idea to piss of the studios, especially after dropping a bomb.
I don’t know if I would buy this film. But just take the story with Simon’s show Spaced it took over 10 years to come out here in the states. It is just bull shit also I can’t wait to see Simon Pegg in TinTin.
Third, this could blacklist them in Hollywood. Especially considering the 2 recent boxoffice bombs Pegg has had.
I’m a fan of these guys and admire their courage, but there’s a saying about killing the goose that lays the golden…
I met Robert Weide at a screening of the film. He was already furious with the studio. He told a story about how the forced him to intert stupid jokes about pigs peeing and such because they didn’t care for the rest of the humor. I could see something like this coming.
the movie bombed incredibly