Firefly series Straight-to-DVD: Is it financially possible? by Blue786

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Firefly series Straight-to-DVD: Is it financially possible?

POSTED BY: BLUE786
UPDATED: Monday, October 31, 2005 10:03
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Monday, October 31, 2005 8:36 AM

Firefly series Straight-to-DVD: Is it financially possible?

Is it financially feasible to bring a series like Firefly back to life by publishing it straight to DVD? Here’s what I am thinking:

It costs about $2 million an episode. (This according to http://emahollywood.com/firefly.html).

Figure about $5.00 per DVD to make and ship it. (This is an estimate I pulled out of thin air).

Figure a season of 13 episodes (This is based more on the model of a cable TV show, which traditionally do 13 episodes per season, as opposed to 22 seasons per episode on network TV). That means viewers would get a new episode about once a month.

Figure you charge about $20.00 per DVD, including shipping. That leaves $15.00 profit per DVD.

With this math, you would need about 130,000 sales to break even. Figure 200,000 sales needed in order to make a healthy profit.

Judging by the international popularity of the series, and the huge number of devoted Browncoats out there, I would assume that it would be easy to sell about 200,000 copies of each episode, assuming the series kept the original quality.

I imagine the toughest thing would be to get the up-front money to get the ball rolling. Someone would have to front several million dollars to get the process rolling. Not to mention that a “TV series” going straight to DVD is an untried business venture. Also, this person would have to put up the money to purchase the rights to the series from Fox in order to even get started.

What do you all think? Am I missing something? What kind of holes can you poke in this idea? I’ll admit I’m a new fan—Has this already been discussed ad nauseum?

Do you know of a sci-fi loving venture capitalist with a few million sitting around?

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Monday, October 31, 2005 10:03 AM

ADMIRAL

yeah, but i'm sure us browncoats would like it on the air instead of straight to dvd

The Hero of Canton, the man they call Jayne!!!

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