Wal-Mart rocks

    Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal weighed in today with stories about how Wal-Mart has reacted to a declining CD market by striking exclusive deals to release new albums by Baby Boomer-era rockers, notably the Eagles and Journey, whose discs have already been selling at Wal-Mart, and AC-DC, which the Journal says is expected to sell a new album exclusively through Wal-Mart sometime this fall. For aging rockers, the appeal is obvious. Even though younger music fans prefer to download songs for 99 cents on iTunes, older consumers are still buying CDs at a pretty decent clip, with Wal-Mart accounting for roughly 30% of all CD sales.

      I found myself thinking about the Wal-Mart arrangement as I drove back from lunch today with a veteran Hollywood agent. His client list is filled with directors who are the equivalent of those classic rock bands--he reps filmmakers who all had big hits and were once regular Oscar contenders, but who are now largely unemployable at movie studios, since movie studios prefer to hire a cool new (but completely untested) video director than a classy old pro who might be too obstinate or arrogant to listen to the studio's hapless script notes.

     So how does this connect to Wal-Mart?

 

      What if Wal-Mart could recruit a group of established, brand-name filmmakers to deliver direct-to-DVD movies that would appeal to the same boomer audience that made the Eagles "The Long Road Out of Eden" the third-best selling album of 2007? The movies would be genre throwbacks to the director's best work: I could imagine Brian de Palma or Sidney Lumet, for example, doing crime thrillers; Mike Nichols or Neil Jordan doing a sophisticated comedy; David Cronenberg or Quentin Tarantino doing a horror film or Curtis Hanson or Phillip Noyce doing a smart drama.

     The economics are really already in place. Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows Your Dead" was made for a pittance, came loaded with talented actors and got some of the  best reviews of the year. Yet, as a theatrical release, it was a lost cause, taking roughly 4 1/2 months of release to make $7 million. With its name cast, money reviews and Wal-Mart's marketing muscle (remember, 130 million people shop at a Wal-Mart store every week), it could've gone into profit within weeks. In today's equity-financing world, there are hundreds of outside investors who would be delighted to bankroll films with A-list or even B-plus talent, even if a theatrical release isn't neccessarily in the offing. For all the marketing money Warners spent on "Michael Clayton," the film would've been far more profitable if it had been a DVD from start-to-finish.

    Of course there are still a host of stars and directors who see video as a step down in their careers--and probably still view Wal-Mart, with its paltry wages and scant health care, as a politically incorrect pitstop for their film. But for directors who want to get movies made, it could offer a whole new start. And if the Eagles' Don Henley, an outspoken lefty and ardent environment, can make his peace with America's most politically hidebound retailer, surely a big contingent of Hollyood film talent, all eager to get back behind the camera, couldn't be far behind.

Comments

[D]

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10811413#About+the+Album

Hypocrisy and aging rock stars trying to remain relevant, abandon their principles just like Henley.
In the ultimate act of rock hypocrisy, Man of the people, champion of the working class, a labor rights supporter, speaker for those who have no voice, has signed an exclusivity deal with WALMART, the retailer which best represents what is wrong with this country. Life long fans are furious and threatening to boycott all future Springsteen output, shows, merchandise.