Morningstar Entertainment is hoping Canadians will revisit the Winter Olympics with a lengthy DVD box set, Torino 2006: Canada’s Quest for Success, which hit the street on April 25 at $60 a pop. The six-disc, 20-plus hour set, produced in partnership with CBC, features many of the Canadian highs and lows of the 2006 Winter Games.

Jason Möring, the Toronto-based distrib’s national sales manager, admits that DVD sports titles can be difficult to move, and pre-release orders for the set have been slower than he had hoped, but he is confident the product will move well thanks to a strong marketing campaign that launched April 24.

Morningstar is running ads during the NHL playoffs on CBC TV and radio, on The Score, and in print. Canadian Olympians also made in-store appearances in their hometowns promoting the set on April 25.

‘Canada had its best Olympics ever [winning 24 medals], so I think at the end of the day we’re going to ship decent numbers,’ says Möring.

CBC supplied all of the footage and commentary for the DVD from its TV broadcasts, and produced its Olympics coverage with a DVD release in mind. The set is replete with bonus content not broadcast during the Games, including a behind-the-scenes look at the moments immediately after Jennifer Heil won gold for Canada in women’s moguls. CBC follows the skier as she rushes through the press junket, the doping tent, a special dinner and a call from the prime minister.

Morningstar will also release the CBC miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story on May 9. The disc will feature a look at how the film’s riot scene was crafted, and how star Michael Therriault was aged to resemble Douglas through the years.

AA ships 8,000 Terrifico DVDs

Alliance Atlantis quietly released the musical mockumentary The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico – starring Matt Murphy as a country music icon who releases a new record 30 years after his supposed death – on April 18 with a lack of promotion that has frustrated its producer, Nicholas Tabarrok of Darius Films.

Tabarrok says he is pleased with the disc’s packaging and features, but wishes its distributor could have done more to support the picture, which shared the best Canadian first feature award at the Toronto International Film Festival. AA shipped some 8,000 units of the movie and has seen revenues of roughly $150,000, ‘decent numbers’ says SVP of home entertainment Noah Segal.

‘I’m not sure what more we could do,’ says Segal. ‘I think the picture has done decently. We’d like to see bigger numbers on everything, but the market is very tight… and we got placement in all the key accounts. And that’s the key thing.’

Tabarrok would like to have seen more, saying that having people see the film and making consumers aware of it is far more important to him than the returns, however he understands AA’s plight.

‘[A release] has to make economic sense, and the economic model for a low-budget Canadian film only gives it x-number of support dollars. I accept that,’ says Tabarrok. ‘Would I have loved a full-page ad in [Toronto weekly] Now Magazine trumpeting the release? Sure, but I wasn’t expecting it.’

The disc’s extra scenes include one in which Terrifico’s manager, Phil Kaufman (a real-life music manager playing himself), talks about the similarities between the death of his client and musician Gram Parsons. The jewel of the bonus materials is a single-take, in-studio musical performance of the song New Mister Me by costar Kris Kristofferson, heard throughout the film.

Also…

* Paradox Home Entertainment has entered a partnership with Japanese TV distributor Bandai (Power Rangers, Gundam Seed!) that will see the Brampton, ON-based outfit distribute new and archived Bandai content throughout Canada.

* MGM has released a deluxe edition of Norman Jewison’s 1987 Oscar-winner Moonstruck, featuring a documentary about the film and commentary by Jewison, star Cher and writer John Patrick Shanley.