On February 5, 2002 MGM is releasing the DVD of the cult film Ghost World, which was directed by Terry Zwigoff and based on a graphic novel by Dan Clowes.  While Ghost World was much more of a 'sleeper' hit than a box office bonanza, it was a great boon to many comic and pop culture shops.  The Ghost World graphic novel quickly became Fantagraphics best-selling trade paperback of all time as retailers sold through edition after edition until the final tally reached well past 70,000 copies in print (see 'Ghost World Books Boffo' and 'Ghost World Still Going Strong').  For many pop culture stores Ghost World was the most important film of the summer easily outdistancing high profile 'blockbusters' like Shrek, The Mummy Returns, and Pearl Harbor in the amount of tie-in merchandise it moved.  Now the DVD edition, which carries a $26.98 retail price, offers retailers another chance to profit off this remarkable property.

  

MGM has priced the DVD lower than the VHS edition (srp $32) in spite of the fact that the DVD contains a lot of extras including deleted and alternate scenes, a 'making-of' featurette, interviews with the cast and crew, and a rare music video.  The pricing of Ghost World is an admission by MGM that the sell-through marketplace is now a DVD world.  The VHS pricing is aimed at video stores whose primary focus is renting and MGM is using the slogan, 'No Programs, no formulas, no headaches,' to describe the $32 flat pricing, which appears to be out of line in comparison to the DVD price, but which makes sense in comparison to 'rental' priced VHS tapes which are still often sold to video stores for up to $100, or are available as part of elaborate, often complicated programs in which the video stores provide the studios with a percentage of each and every rental.

 

The Ghost World DVD should be of interest to pop culture retailers for a couple of reasons.  First of all, since the film only made $6 million at the box office, the mass-market retailers are unlikely to use this title as a loss leader to bring in customers.  Second, Ghost World, which never received wide full-scale theatrical distribution, has a chance to be one of those films that does a little better than expected at the box office, but really blossoms into a full-blown cult film in video.  It does have a chance to gain new viewers and hence new readers for the Dan Clowes graphic novel (as well as the illustrated screenplay).  Retailers who did well with the graphic novel when the film was in theaters should think seriously about displaying the DVD and the Ghost World books together in a prominent spot in February.  In general the video release of film won't necessarily do all that much to create sales of tie-in merchandise (think Little Nicky), but the exception to this rule is the cult film that manages to reach a new audience through a wide video release.  Ghost World, which has already demonstrated a considerable ability to move books, has a chance to become that kind of a cult film.