The upcoming best picture battle between Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker and other Oscar contenders will spin off impressive Canadian DVD sales for distributor Maple Pictures. That prediction came from minority shareholder Lionsgate, whose films Maple releases in Canada, including Precious and the popular Saw franchise.

Maple also releases its own indie third-party titles, including Bigelow’s bomb-disposal thriller, which Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer told analysts will ‘convert 200% and 300%’ revenue-wise as it shifts from theatrical box office to DVD sales in Canada.

‘[Maple has] been very opportunistic in terms of third-party product, and are contributing nicely this year,’ Feltheimer added as the Canadian distributor helped fuel Lionsgate’s positive EBITIDA during the latest financial quarter to Dec. 31. For its part, Lionsgate posted its best-ever quarter for library sales during the latest frame.

The Vancouver-based studio earned US$95 million in home entertainment revenue, coming mostly from its movie and TV catalog as it had no major new theatrical titles released in the quarter on DVD.

TV production revenue jumped 32% to US$92 million as Lionsgate delivered to Spike TV 13 episodes of Blue Mountain State, which is shot in Toronto, and episodes of AMC’s Mad Men, Crash for Starz and Nurse Jackie for Showtime.

Still, Lionsgate only managed to narrow its third-quarter loss to US$65.3 million, against a loss of US$97.8 million in 2009, on third-quarter revenues rising 15% to US$371.8 million, against US$324 million in 2009.

The culprit was continuing steep theatrical film marketing and distribution costs for Lionsgate’s film slate.