Is this shops not bothering about official release dates? Maybe they think it's an unknown movie that they've never heard of so why bother, as opposed to Harry Potter which they know they have to follow the date they're told?

Or maybe Universal is doing what they did with the movie, advance screenings to build demand?

zz9 | December 04, 04:30 CET

Nah zz9, some shops do this alot. I remember when a friend was visiting from NY, he told me about how he gets video games and movies earlier than us down south.

eddy | December 04, 04:35 CET

Yeah, stores face fines for releasing titles early - but it happens a lot in NY apparently. For example, they already have "40 Year Old Virgin" on shelves there, despite it still being 2 weeks till release on DVD. I wouldn't take this as a problem with Serenity - "Virgin" was one of Universal's biggest movies this year.

Edit: How long until this appears online, and on ebay?

[ edited by gossi on 2005-12-04 02:43 ]

gossi | December 04, 04:43 CET

that's really weird. i've lived in nyc my whole life (and still do) and never once noticed that we get movies in stores earlier than the release date! then again, alot of the shops their talking about seem to be on 8th ave, and i'm rarely up there!

Drusillaloveskyo | December 04, 04:56 CET

There had just better be some left when I get there, is all I can say...

[ edited by Kiddo on 2005-12-04 11:48 ]

Kiddo | December 04, 13:48 CET

I worked for two major chains (Virgin and Wherehouse) and we would never intentionally put a new release out early, because we could face fines from the distribution company. However, sometimes a title gets put out early by mistake (which happened with Buffy season five actually) and sometimes it's a small chain or even a larger store that just doesn't care. My local corner video store puts every title out the second the receive it, no matter what the release date is. Hmm, which makes me think they probably have Serenity out now if other stores do too... I might have to go check that out today.

Eric G | December 04, 21:35 CET

There is one well-known union-busting, kill off the little stores mega store that regularly puts things out early. They figure they are too big and important to pay attention to the rules.
And I guess these guys figure they are too little.
A friend of mine picked up a pirated copy of Serenity 2 weeks after it opened. The store got raided by the police the next day and they were back in business 3 days later.

Lioness | December 05, 03:12 CET

I did a little recon on Eighth Avenue between 42nd and 46th Streets in NYC today, and there are definitely four or five stores there selling the Serenity DVD early. Most have it in the front window with other new releases, and are selling it for $24.98 or $24.99, although one has it going for $29.99.

Personally, I'm going to wait until the actual release date if for no other reason than to get it at a cheaper price.

RambleOn623 | December 05, 04:08 CET

There's a couple of small DVD and music stores in the Toronto area that I know of which completely ignore release dates. As soon as they get anything it goes right out onto the shelf. They figure they are too small for the music labels or movie studios to notice and manage to make quite of few extra sales for releasing it early. I'm going to check some of these stores this week to see if any of them have Serenity. :-)

Matt_Fabb | December 05, 04:48 CET

Eric G, what is your local video store that puts out stuff early? If you don't mind spilling your secret...fellow Los Angelenos would like to know.

bonzob | December 05, 05:23 CET

I just spotted a complete copy of the Serenity DVD online. Two versions have made it online so far, in total it's got about 5000 downloaders.

ETA: Combining the copies gets about 20000 people downloading it now.

[ edited by gossi on 2005-12-05 15:35 ]

gossi | December 05, 14:09 CET