Television shows on DVD may peter out after the first few seasons, but not “Lost.”
The celebrated TV show’s sixth and final season debuted as the top-selling DVD and Blu-ray Disc release the week ending Aug. 29, despite a price tag three times higher than the average new movie.
On the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert sales chart, “Lost: The Complete Sixth Season,” from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, snatched the top spot from another Disney release, the Miley Cyrus film “The Last Song,” which slipped to No. 3 its sophomore week.
Sony Pictures’ “The Back-Up Plan,” a romantic comedy with Jennifer Lopez that grossed $37.5 million in theaters, debuted at No. 2, selling 75% as many units as “Lost.”
“Lost” also debuted at No. 1 on Nielsen VideoScan’s dedicated Blu-ray Disc sales chart, with the newly issued “Lost: The Complete Series” bowing at No. 2, despite a suggested retail price of $279.99.
But then again, Blu-ray Disc and “Lost” seem made for each other, with 20% of all “Lost” season sets sold last week in the high-definition format.
“Soul Survivors” and “The Sanctuary,” the final two collector photographs from ABC’s hit series “Lost,” are available for purchase beginning today while supplies last. Featuring the cast from the final season, only 815 numbered reproductions of each image will be custom printed on high quality photo paper. Pricing for the 10×37 “Soul Survivors” print is $69.99; “The Sanctuary” cast photo will only be available as an 8×10 print for $19.99. A certificate of authenticity will be included for each print.
“Soul Survivors”
These final images will also be available for purchase at the “LOST” The Official Show Auction and Exhibit, which will take place in southern California at the Barker Hangar in the Santa Monica Airport on Saturday, August 21 and Sunday, August 22.
“Lost” fans can purchase the prints by going to www.officialLostphotos.com, which is the sole home of all of the cast images from every season of “Lost” going back to the series premiere in 2004.
Damon Lindelof, Lost‘s co-creator and executive producer, told the Fortune audience that fans asked two questions about the plot, more than any other: Do you guys have a plan? And, Do you guys listen to the fans? Hardcore Lost enthusiasts wanted both answers to be “absolutely,” Lindelof said, “but the two things are in direct opposition to each other. So we realized we have to make ourselves accessible to the fans. What they really wanted was for us to listen to them complain.”
So Disney and Lost‘s producers created webisodes and mobisodes and podcasts to keep up the dialogue between shows. Eventually, Disney put full episodes on Hulu, whose users skew much younger than TV viewers and more male than ABC.com’s. The Lost producers also used cutting-edge digital “green screens” to set scenes in Korea, snowy Russia, and on Iraqi oil fields without leaving Oahu, where Lost was shot. Ironically, fans complained that the one scene they filmed on location, in London along the Thames River to accommodate an actor’s schedule, looked fake.
In May, when Lost ended its six-year run, the show ranked No. 1 in Internet viewing, according to Nielsen. The program aired in 59 countries 24 to 48 hours after the original U.S. telecast, dubbed in many native languages — impossible to do until recent digital advances.
After the [TCA] awards show, I asked Lindelof about the end credits of the last “Lost” episode which showed pictures of the plane wreckage on the beach, which some viewers interpreted to mean that everyone died when the plane crashed. ABC had said they put that footage there, which turns out to be sort of true.
Lindelof said three days before air he got a call from someone at the studio who said the network planned to run a “Cougar Town” spot over the end credits of “Lost” and everyone agreed that would have been inappropriate. Producers’ first choice was to just go to black but the network feared that would set a precedent, there might be issues with the unions over credits and then everyone would want to run credits over black (heaven forbid!). So producers suggested using B-roll footage of the empty hatch, the empty beach camp, whatever they could find. Turned out no such footage existed but there was footage of the empty, broken plane fuselage. No one thought when it cut together it would be interpreted the way it was but Lindelof said he didn’t know of any other way he would do it differently if he had it to do over because no matter what images they put there, he figures viewers would pick them apart.
Lindelof also said he’ll never talk about what producers’ artistic intention was with the finale because he feels like it was very simple and very clear and no matter what he says, some viewers won’t believe him.
“LOST” THE OFFICIAL SHOW AUCTION AND EXHIBIT, FEATURING A LIVE AND
ONLINE AUCTION OF THE ICONIC PROPS, WARDROBE AND SET DECORATION
OF THE HIT ABC SERIES, IS SET TO TAKE PLACE SATURDAY, AUGUST 21
AND SUNDAY, AUGUST 22
Auction and Exhibit to Take Place in Southern California at the Barker Hangar
In the Santa Monica Airport
“LOST” The Official Show Auction and Exhibit will take place in southern California at the Barker Hangar in the Santa Monica Airport on Saturday, August 21 and Sunday, August 22. ABC Studios, in partnership with Profiles in History, will conduct a live and online auction featuring the iconic props, wardrobe and set decoration of the Emmy Award-winning television series. Along with the auction, ABC will be offering fans an opportunity to immerse themselves in all things “LOST.” Large set pieces from the show will be on display, including a Dharma van and pieces of the plane wreckage from Oceanic flight 815. Other memorable props and wardrobe will also be featured.
In addition, fans will have an early sneak peek of Season 6 DVD bonus material before the August 24 DVD and Blu-Ray release date, including moments of the much anticipated new chapter, “The New Man in Charge,” from executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.
A few weeks ago Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse spoke about the future of television at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference. Today Henry Jenkins published some videos and highlights from the panel:
In a recent Variety article, you were quoted as saying that all of Lost‘s loose ends will not be wrapped up or answered in the series finale. Other sources are reporting that ABC is interested in keeping the Lost franchise alive after the finale. Are those two bits of news related? That is, does leaving loose ends have to do with sustaining a franchise beyond the series’ completion?
CARLTON CUSE: Most of these things are very narrative driven for us and it’s a hard thing to try to articulate specifically when we want the audience to understand that every small little niggling question will be impossible to answer watching the show. Our goals as storyteller were to tackle the big questions and try to bring the story to a satisfactory resolution. But if you’re wondering who’s the guy is, etc, you’re not gonna get that answer in the series. The story we were telling in Lost, we planned to end on May 23rd, we have no plan to do any kind of sequel or spin off, anything. We set out to tell the story of the most significant thing that happened. Telling the story was our ability to negotiate with ABC in the 3rd season of the show. Now we’re bringing the story that we plan to tell to a conclusion. Now that said, we’ve also acknowledged that we’re not the owners of Lost. It is owned by the Walt Disney company and it is an incredibly valuable franchise. Worth billions as opposed to millions of dollars. And we completely understand that the Disney company will choose to continue to make money under the Lost franchise at some future point…
There’s no way when you tell a story that you can tie up all the loose ends, there are many creative minds who’ll come stories to ABC and propose to take Lost, using franchise label in the future, and that’s great. The story we wanted to tell was that tv series and that ends in May.
You know those Oceanic 815 plane crash images that ran after Jack’s (Matthew Fox) eye closed and the “Lost” logo appeared on our TV screens? Some “Lost” fans and TV critics have wondered if they were a last Easter egg from the producers, a clue meant to lead us to conclude that no one survived Oceanic 815′s crash landing — and therefore everything we’ve seen over the last six years never really happened.
Well, ABC wants to clear the air: Those photographs were not part of the “Lost” story at all. The network added them to soften the transition from the moving ending of the series to the 11 p.m. news and never considered that it would confuse viewers about the actual ending of the show.
“The images shown during the end credits of the ‘Lost’ finale, which included shots of Oceanic 815 on a deserted beach, were not part of the final story but were a visual aid to allow the viewer to decompress before heading into the news,” an ABC spokesperson wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.
That means, Losties, that we were not supposed to think that Christian Shepherd (John Terry) is a liar. What Christian told his son, when they were reunited at the church, should serve as guidance for our interpretation of the series’ ending.
Television shows on DVD may peter out after the first few seasons, but not “Lost.”
Tags: ABC, dvd, DVD/Blu-Ray, Season 6
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