When Disney released its hit movie "The Lion King" on video last week, a minidrama played out in the video movie sales jungle.
The company set a street release date of Feb. 28 for the video version of the animated film and an advertising date of March 3. But some stores across the country pounced too soon.Buena Vista Home Video, a Disney company, received 200 calls from mouse finks about competitors who violated the release date, which is meant to maintain a level selling field for retailers. According to Steve Feldstein, Buena Vista spokesman, 120 of those calls proved legitimate.
Feldstein wouldn't confirm whether some of the stores that jumped the gun were located in Utah, although the Deseret News received such reports. Nor would he say what action Disney might take except that it planned to "discuss it with the offending parties."
Dennis Wigent, manager of electronic communications for Kmart, said a few of the chain's 2,350 stores were among those that acted overeagerly in setting out "The Lion King."
After receiving calls from Disney, the company contacted some of its stores to get them back in line, Wigent said.
"There were a couple of occasions where we did that, we had to call and tell them to pull back," Wigent said.
"Street day jumping," as it's called in the industry, is an issue that pits the small, independent stores that tend to concentrate on rentals against the mega, nation-wide chains that focus more on video sales.
"Kmart, for instance, can sell much more cheaply than small stores, and because the other guys are so big, they get shipments earlier because it takes more time to get them out of the box," said Bruce Apar, editor of Video Business magazine. "Technically speaking, they're not supposed to put them out before a certain date, but it's difficult to control that."
The problem reached an apex in the industry with the release last October of "Jurassic Park" on video. MCA/Universal shipped copies of the video-version of the movie early and then didn't set up proper safeguards to keep retailers in line, Apar said. The industry was rife with street date jumping.
Retailers may be less apt to obey street release dates set by a studio like MCA, which has a less proven track record of hit movies. Disney, on the other hand, is practically synonymous with blockbuster movies, and retailers aren't anxious to get on the company's bad side.
"That's the day we're supposed to have them out, so we wait until that day," Clint Barton, manager of Video Shop, 488 E. South Temple, says of release dates.
Besides not wanting to jeopardize being able to offer the company's next hit, retailers depend on Disney's financial help with advertisements. It's hard to ask for repayment, though, if you jump an advertising date, Apar said.
Of course, "the bigger the chain, the less they care about these mechanisms," Apar said.
But most play along.
"Usually in the discount business nobody would mess with that," said Todd Pierson, manager of the ShopKo store in West Jordan.
With good reason. At both ShopKo and Kmart, sales of "The Lion King" have been "terrific."
"It's been the best release we've had corporately for Disney," Pier-son said.
Kmart took reservations for copies of the video and had "the highest presale of any tape we've done," Wigent said. "The first three days of sales were the highest of any tape we've ever sold. It looks like it's well on its way to being the highest volume tape ever."
That means "The Lion King" will probably topple "Snow White" from its current reign at 25 million videos sold. Already, more than 20 million copies, with an average price of $16.95, have been sold.
Given the number of retailers it dealt with, Disney "did an excellent job containing the release" of "The Lion King," Apar said. He estimates the video is being sold in more than 80,000 outlets across the country - which makes 120 documented violations an "infinitesimal" number.
Disney first set up a hotline to take reports of release date violations last fall when it released the video version of "Snow White".
"It's not been a terrible problem in the past (for Disney), but there have been problems for others," Feld-stein said. "We take our leadership in the industry very seriously."
But the truth is, like any other business, it's a lion-eat-lion world out there. A street release date is a nicety, a distribution policy with no legal force. So is a hotline for taking reports of violations.
"It's frankly a way of publicly dealing with it and quieting it down," Apar said.
Small retailers often talk about fines for jumping street dates, but "when you talk to studio executives they laugh at the idea that some large retailer would pay a fine," Apar said. Or that a chain like a ShopKo would care if it didn't get advertising help from Disney.
At Kmart, the policy is to abide by release dates. But, Wigent said, "our stores are told to meet the competition." If someone else springs early, Kmarts are likely to follow suit.
And then there's the matter of volume. Barton's Video Shop has sold all 18 copies of "The Lion King" it ordered; Kmart and other large chains like Media Play, may be selling that many a day - or hour. It's the difference between Simba's squeak and Scar's roar in the first part of "The Lion King."
"We don't sell enough copies to make a difference," said Bob Brown, manager of the Cinema Shop on Highland Drive. "We have had to back off from the sales because we don't have that kind of demand."
Brown waxes philosophical about street date jumping and the saga of little stores vs. big chains, picking up a theme that runs through "The Lion King."
"What in business has ever been fair?" he muses. "Whoever said it was (fair)? It's the fact of business. Is it fair? No. Does it make any difference? Not really."