Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
Not sure if I'm interpreting this correctly, but are you saying that you think the TLT sales will be *less* than the sales of the each of the five season sets, movies and Crusade ("not every fan is going to buy TLT")?
Yeah that's pretty much it. I don't have any actual sales numbers, but my strong suspicion is that the B5 season sets outsold the TV movie box, which outsold Crusade, which outsold the Rangers pilot. With most genre projects the "main" work attracts the most loyal fans. Peripheral and subsidiary works have their fans as well, but these are generally subsets of the larger base. (For instance, you can figure that everyone who read The Silmarillion also read The Lord of the Rings, but there are millions of Rings fans who never bothered with The Silmarillion. I own several copies of the first three Star Wars films and none of the prequels - I've never even seen Attack of the Clones - because they don't interest me. ST:TOS and TNG have a lot more fans than the later shows. And so on.)
Are there folks who skipped the B5 season sets (for financial or other reasons) but who will check out TLT? Sure. I just think there are a lot more fans of the original who are content with the completed series and never pursued any of the spin-offs or side-stories and will ignore TLT. I think that's just the nature of fandom. (Now I wouldn't hazard a guess as to how well TLT[/b] will do in relation to Crusade or the movie box, because there are too many variables, but I think it is a given that the main series will always attract more fan support.)
My only point is that WB would have based the budget for TLT on a conservative sales estimate for the disc to ensure that it at least broke even. Naturally they'd be delighted if it equalled or exceeded the sales for the B5 series - but that's not the way to bet when you're trying something basically unprecedented in the entertainment biz.
Regards,
Joe