Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (Zavvi Exclusive) (UK)

[blurayisnice]

Originally Posted by Petra_Kalbrain

MOST of the time it's just about money & studio permission for artwork and the retailer foots the bill for both the steelbook production and the discs to fill the case. However, it is clear that anyone can get a steelbook made. What it all comes down to is having the funds to pay for the steelbook case order + discs (if including them) + permission from studio on the artwork.

So, if I wanted to create my own, I'd submit that to the studio asking permission. If they approved it then I'd need to place an order with Scanavo (likely for the minimum 4,000 units required). The problem then lies in selling whatever that order consists of to make my money back. That's probably why it doesn't happen much outside of large retailers who can afford the front-loaded cost.

On occasion though, I bet a retailer will get permission to have them printed, but don't want to have 4,000 of each. This is when other retailers come into play. They can likely all just split an order of 4,000 (or more to cover all of their wants -> See Jack Reacher as a likely example of this scenario). So, 4 retailers order 5,000 and each gets 1,250 copies, which lowers the initial cost burden.

And, on occasion I would imagine that studios will foot the bill and then simply offer them to all of their clients for retail resale. However, this is much less likely since we never actually see these steelbook releases available from the studios directly through their own online stores (like WB) or in their retail stores (like Sony).

But you're talking about 4,000.
The hidef one had a 500 print run, the first ES exclusive 500, the second 1,000 and the third 2,000. The blufans ones are also 1,000.