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Comment by magikbum | Hacker News Reader

"Why aren’t you offering a Digital Download or DVD reward?

I wish I could give you all everything you want. Unfortunately, giving away the movie could scare off the good distributors for movies like this, because the theater chains insist on having the “first run” of movies before they are available on DVD or digitally. I want all my fans to be able to see this movie in their hometown theaters on the big screen if they want to. I hope you like the rewards I am offering, and if there’s something you don’t see on the page, please comment and let me know."

It is pretty simple--why would someone buy the rights to his DVD to only find out that the top 20k fans of his who would be buying that DVD/Download already have it.

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And also those same fans are now less motivated to go see the film in theaters because their DVD is already pre-ordered, potentially hurting box office revenue.

It is actually brilliant, now he can go to the distributors and say "these thousands of people were so excited about this project that they paid to make it... so of course they will pay us to see it!"

Maybe. Or maybe many of those people have paid to have the film made, and now will think nothing of pirating it.

But then the point could be made that those thousands of people on Kickstarter would be advocates or "net promoters" for the movie.

Why not make the download or BluRay available when they get released anyways? I wouldn't care. And I would have paid $30 to get this plus the playlists/script.

Because that's not how distributors work, I'd assume. They'll want exclusive rights in their territory.

He could buy the DVDs from the distributor at wholesale and send them out to his backers. This would flip the negotiation around since he'd be guaranteeing a certain number of sales.

Not convincing me I don't WANT a DVD. Sure its hard, distributors want what they want, but thats pfft to me. For my $20 I want something.

Your goals and Zach’s just don’t align on this one—so don’t back it. His feelings will probably not be hurt and he will still be glad to sell you a DVD when the time comes.

This is a Kickstarter project, not an Amazon pre-order.

Right. And unlike almost every other Kickstarter 'art' project, it doesn't propose sharing the result with the folks funding it.

I think the guy might consider just taking a loan or whatever, to fund for-profit ventures in the future.

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