'Death Race' DVD Prequel Gets the Green Light

The home video market, as we know, is hurting. That wasn't always the case, and in fact, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that the ballooning budgets in Hollywood this decade could be a direct result of DVD sales that greatly exceed the studios' theatrical returns, but with a much smaller total investment. Put another way, DVD sales were so good for a while that you could make a $150 million movie and trust that through domestic and foreign box office, TV rights, and DVD sales, you would turn a healthy profit more often than not.

But those days, if not over, are certainly pining for the fjords. After a $25 billion year in 2004, sales fell to $23.7 billion in 2007, to $22.4 billion last year, and if 2009 projections are correct, down to about $21 billion this year. That's still a lot of money, but it's dropping precipitously, down almost 20% in five years. However, we're still seeing a rise in direct-to-DVD titles, most of them spin-offs of successful or marginally successful films. It follows that if a movie was an enormous hit theatrically, a DVD-only sequel is missing the boat. That brings us to Death Race, the Paul W.S. Anderson remake from 2008, which failed to make back its budget in the US, but was at least moderately profitable overseas. However, it didn't rank among the top 50 DVDs of the year, selling less than $25 million worth of product, so why a new direct-to-DVD prequel has been given the go-ahead is strange to me.

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Gearing Up for a 'Death Race' Prequel

As guilty pleasures go, I enjoyed last year's Death Race. While not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, it had some great scenes for Joan Allen, the action was quite good, and the story was simple enough to not get in the way of everything else we paid to see. As I said then, "If you want a pineapple upside-down cake and what you order tastes like a pineapple upside-down cake, then you can’t really complain, right?"

It didn't make a ton of money but it didn't cost a whopping sum, either, so it's only marginally surprising that Paul W.S. Anderson is revving up a prequel. The pitch: Let's explore the past of the intimidating driver known as Frankenstein. Now, in the new version, there had been several guys wearing the iron mask before Jason Statham, kind of like the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride. I would suspect this would develop the story of the original Frankenstein, who had been in so many accidents, according to the legend, that he wore a mask to hide his gruesome face.

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Win 'Death Race' on DVD

We have another free DVD for you to win, proving once and for all how generous we are. Or at least, that's one possibility.This time around, you can get your Statham on with Death Race, the latest flick from director Paul W.S. Anderson (check out or interview with Mr. Milla Jovovich here). It's not really a remake of the Roger Corman movie Death Race 2000, but it's not too far from it. I'll say this: It's more like Death Race 2000 than it is Howard's End. There's very little Merchant-Ivory about Death Race.So we've got DVDs and all you have to do is answer a Ridiculously Easy Movie Trivia question:Who's tallest, Jason Statham, Joan Allen or Ian McShane?Answer that question via e-mail by Saturday, December 27th at 10pm Pacific to be in the running. We'll draw winners at random early next week. Oh, and make sure you include your mailing address in your answer.Death Race is available on DVD and Blu-Ray now from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.

The Big Picture Interview: Director Paul W.S. Anderson

I had the chance to jump on the line with Paul W.S. Anderson the other day to talk about Death Race, which is now out on DVD. As you'll soon learn, even though the film wasn't a massive hit in the U.S., Anderson probably won't need to take a second job anytime soon.

Anderson told me, among other things, that he had been trying to make a new version of Death Race since his first film opened in America almost 15 years ago, and that he appealed to Tom Cruise's love of cars to get his help producing the film. The director and I began by setting the record straight on whether or not Death Race is really a remake of the Roger Corman production, Death Race 2000.Big Picture: This isn't, I guess, technically a remake.Paul Anderson: No, I've never referred to the film as a remake. I've always used two other terms, a re-imagining or a prequel. I love Roger Corman's original movie and I think what that movie does, it does so well, with the satirical comedy and everything. I would never actually want to remake that movie because I don't know what I could do to make it better. So what did you take from the first film, either thematically or physically, that you needed for Death Race?There were certain concepts within it that I became obsessed about. I became obsessed about these cars that were built as much to kill as they were to race. In Roger's movie, even though the drivers hated each other, they never smashed the cars into each other. And the reason for that Roger could only afford to build one of each car and if they ever crashed, there'd be no movie. And some of the cars had machine guns mounted on them but they never fired. And the reason for that is because the machine guns were built out of wood. The other thing that I became fascinated about was that in Roger's movie the Death Race was the national sport in America. And I always wondered how that happened. How did something like that supplant baseball and basketball? What was the genesis of the Death Race?

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Check Out Some 'Death Race' DVD Features

One of those new releases is Death Race, which is not technically speaking a remake of the Roger Corman flick, Death Race 2000. It's a modified version of that with some of the same elements and character names, but there are some big differences, too.And you know what? I didn't mind the new Death Race at all. As I said in my review at the time, "If you want a pineapple upside-down cake and what you order tastes like a pineapple upside-down cake, then you can’t really complain, right?" And Death Race delivers on what it's supposed to be. The action's solid, Jason Statham scowls a lot, the stunts are good, and Joan Allen makes a great villainess.Here are a couple special features you can find on the new Death Race DVD:
The Perfect Spot
Natalie Martinez in a Crop Top
The Guns and Machines of Death RaceAnd just as a programming note, we've got an interview with director Paul W.S. Anderson coming later today, so be on the lookout for that. Death Race is on shelves today. A Sunday. Man, that's weird.