gcribbs

The Man of Steel is fighting piracy in China after CAV Warner Home Entertainment announced Thursday that it would distribute DVDs of "Superman Returns" there -- two months ahead of the rest of the world.

U.S. release is skedded for Nov. 28.

Disc's priced at between $1.80 and $2.80, comparable to pirated prices, with an encryption technology that makes it very difficult to produce a DVD-quality copy. It will be available in more than 8,000 outlets, thousands of which had previously sold only illegally copied Hollywood films.

To the irritation of Hollywood execs and Washington legislators, pirate DVDs of hit movies are frequently on sale in China within hours of, or indeed long before, their legal equivalents in the West.

CAV Warner Home Entertainment, a joint entertainment distribution venture between Warner Home Video and China Audio Video, said it had released Superman's latest incarnation on Mandarin language-only DVDs.

Launch comes against a background of a 100-day crackdown on piracy in China, begun in June, which has led to the closure of many stores that openly sell illegal DVDs and CDs. There have been hundreds of raids on retail and production outlets as part of the campaign.

Antipiracy campaign comes as China attempts to meet its commitments under the World Trade Organization agreements and is central to its effort to encourage innovation as it moves away from manufacturing into a knowledge-based economy.

The government's 100-day campaign is "clearly having an impact on the legal market," said Mark Horak, exec VP-general manager of Warner Home Video, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...goryid=13&cs=1

exharrison

Why can't they release that here? Of course we'll have to pay $13.99 for our release when it comes out.

Steve

hmm. assuming these are region 3? wonder if the encryption would pose any problem for us region free folks (oppo, etc.)....

Peep

Didn't Warner also do something similar with "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants"?

Those discs were bare-bones, single layer, poorly encrypted, and had huge burnt-in chinese subtitles. Keep in mind those SOTTP discs were to combat piracy, so they didn't need to be very good - just cheap. I don't know if they re-issued a better quality release later, when the rest of the world got theirs. And I never heard how effective the experimental release was.

I'd be very interested in finding out if this is a similar release. The fact that it is a "Mandarin language-only" release make it sound like it's dubbed, which would discourage mass-bootleg replication/production outside of China.

Fincher Fan

Better start pirating then.

DRG

Don't think it'd be worth the effort to import.

UAIOE

He's got two months till its released, that's plenty of time to learn Mandarin!

The Bus

Most Chinese bootlegs aren't worth the $0.50 you pay for them. My dad always gets them when he goes to China on business, and they are laughably awful.

I think this is a smart move by WB and CAV. They can do a cheap release for $2 and a deluxe release for $5 or $10.