Entertainment

April Debut For <i>Star Wars</i> Video

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 5, 2000 / 1:27 PM EST / CBS

Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, 1999's top grossing film with $922 million in global box office receipts, is due to land on video store shelves around the world this April, its producers said on Wednesday.

Twentieth Century Fox film studio's home entertainment group and Lucasfilm Ltd. plan to release the videotape version of the movie beginning April 3 and running through April 8. The North American release date is set for April 4.

But it won't be available in the DVD format, only VHS. And it will not be released in the new DVD format in 2000 or the foreseeable future, Fox said.

"I actually think they're going to have to release it on DVD eventually, because there are so many techies out there who are going to demand it," Robert Buksbaum, an analyst at the Reel Source movie industry newsletter in Los Angeles told CBS.com. "By that time, everyone will have the VHS, too. And they're going to happily pay for it again with the DVD."

Since its release last May, Phantom Menace has become the second highest-grossing motion picture of all time worldwide, behind 1997's mega-hit Titanic.

Fans of the Star Wars of movies lined up outside movie theatres by the thousands when the movie was released and helped it become the fastest film in history to reach $350 million in North American ticket sales. Total current box office receipts are more than $430 million in the U.S. and Canada and $492 million internationally, Fox said in a statement.