Disney To Remove Rental Extras

Disney will become the second studio to deploy two classes of DVD and Blu-ray discs.

Disney follows 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, which began differentiating between rental and sell-through discs with the March 31 titles Marley & Me and Best Picture Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire.

There are two major differences between the Disney and Fox programs, however. Disney will price rental versions at a lower price than features-laden sell-through discs. Fox charges the same for both versions. And whereas Fox dictates which configuration retailers must buy, Disney will make either version available to rentailers, so stores can still rent the titles with bonus features if they choose to stock the higher-priced version.

Recently, Disney also has offered less expensive, movie-only Blu-ray versions of Bolt and Bedtime Stories to rental stores.

Beginning with the June releases, Disney will handle standard DVD in the same fashion, making available a ‘rental ready’ version on many titles. The rental units are not shrink-wrapped and have no promotional inserts inside the box.

The Jonas Brothers DVD, for instance, will be available as a two-disc set holding digital copy and bonus features, priced at $39.99, or as a ‘rental ready’ single-disc version for $29.99 with the movie only.

Disney executives declined to comment on the strategy.

Rental retailers contacted by Video Business support the Disney strategy because it offers them the ability to choose between price and features. “That is all we care about,” said one retail executive. “Not only do you have the difference in price, but retailers can buy either version.”

Rentailers are generally not fans of the Fox program, which has gotten off to a rocky start. Amazon.com and other retailers received the rental version of Slumdog, with no bonus features, inside retail packaging. Then Blockbuster received beefed-up sell-through units of Notorious for rental, which provided the rental giant a surprise competitive edge over other rental stores left with the stripped-down version.

Fox is reviewing its policy, at least for library accounts, following an outcry over the studio’s enforcement of the two-class system.