bob iger
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125,000 movies sold in iTunes Store first week
It looks like a few people, other than me, are buying movies from the iTunes Store. Disney's Bob Iger (which I think is a great last name) says that Disney made $1 million in revenue during the first week that their movies were available in the iTunes Store. This translates to about 125,000 movies being downloaded, and keep in mind that there are no free movies, unlike TV shows. Each of those movies was bought and paid. Iger went on to say that he expects Disney will make $50 million during the first year of availability in the iTunes Store.I imagine this will get other studios interested in getting their archives up on the iTunes Store sooner rather than later.
Disney's Cars & Pirates of the Caribbean miss Blu-ray until '07
Our fears have been confirmed, Disney will not release their two biggest summer movies, Cars & Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on Blu-ray until next year. In contrast to the statements made by a Warner exec about a big HD fourth quarter, they predict a slower adoption for the high definition formats than DVD enjoyed. That isn't to say they're entirely pessimistic about the situation, but CEO Bob Iger just thinks it's too early to predict anything...of course if his company supported HD DVD also and had been already shipping high definition discs for several months at this point maybe he would feel like they have a better handle on things. Still, we should remember that despite a strong summer, Disney is in the middle of restructuring to cut costs, spend less on marketing, and may not want to undergo the expense of shipping such high profile titles to a small, unproven market, instead opting for a low-profile release schedule to start.
