The Digital Playground and Adam & Eve epic release, Pirates, has entered its 26th consecutive week on the AVN Top 25 Weekly Rentals and Sales Chart, the longest stay on the list by any title. The figures are based on the sales of traditional and on-line retailers. Pirates came in at No. 20 for the upcoming week.
The swashbuckling costume dramedy received 24 nominations for the 2006 AVN Awards Show in Las Vegas this past January, more than any other single title has received in adult entertainment history. In the end, Pirates ended up snagging a record 11 statuettes, including awards for Best Video Feature, Best Director – Video, and Best Actress – Video.
Joone, director of the Pirates and owner of Digital Playground, told AVN.com that all the trips up to the stage at the AVN Awards that evening were a first for him. “I’d been pretty low-key up until that point,” he said. “It was truly an honor to have everyone that worked on the movie congratulated for their efforts.”
“The sales have actually been increasing for us over time, instead of decreasing,” enthused Meredith Christopher, head of production at Adam & Eve. “The whole pirate theme is very popular with everybody. Pirates is a fun period piece…it’s really like a Hollywood release that we just brought to the adult world.”
Samantha Lewis, president of Digital Playground, told AVN.com that the mainstream really embraced this movie. “A lot of people that usually shy away from this industry loved Pirates. We just spoke at Yale last month, and here were Ivy League students with 4.5 GPA’s asking Joone everything they could about the movie.”
“I’m getting a lot of resumes from students who want to intern at Digital Playground and be a part of this now.”
After its September '05 release, Pirates quickly became its own cultural phenomenon, complete with a Hollywood-style premiere at the famed Egyptian theatre, a two-month, nationwide promotional tour and a handful of sold-out college screenings at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Carnegie Mellon students showed the feature in the McConomy Auditorium on campus. The screenings were promoted as “TBA Pirates” which is a campus euphemism for publicly screened porn.
Chloe Connelly, the CMU Film Chair said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen people so excited about a movie on campus. The [Pirates] poster was fantastic. There were more people interested than we could let in. The screening was phenomenal.”
Jimmy Flynt II, Hustler Entertainment’s vice president of marketing, said of the feature’s national tour, “The overwhelming success of the Pirates events is proof that customers want high quality productions. Pirates is the future of adult entertainment.”
“We wanted to bring some awareness to the movie,” said Joone. “There are a lot of great box covers in this industry, but sometimes the actual movie doesn’t stack up to what’s on the box. Luckily, the trailers for Pirates came out around the time of the tour, and people were able to see that we made the movie itself just as impressive as the box cover.”
The high-definition release also garnered some mainstream press from sources like MSNBC, KDKA Radio and Reuters. Newsweek touted the release as “a sprawling epic” in their November Issue, and Pirates made the February 2006 cover of Home Cinema Magazine and was named by LA Weekly as their Video Pick of the Week in its December 2 issue.
“We’re constantly asked if there is going to be a sequel,” said Katy Zvolerin, director of PR at Adam & Eve. “It has a little something for everybody; special effects, humor and the sex is amazing.”
“Everyone at Adam & Eve is just elated with the success of Pirates,” said publicist Brian Gross.
Pirates also marks the first time two exclusive contract stars have been featured in the same title, with Jesse Jane (Digital Playground) and Carmen Luvana (Adam & Eve).
“The whole cast was amazing,” said Pirates starlet Teagan Presley. “The movie doesn’t just appeal to one set of people. It appeals to all demographics…it’s not just your regular porn movie.”
“It just took off and we have not slowed down one bit,” said Lewis.
Pirates stars Jesse Jane, Carmen Luvana, Janine, Teagan Presley, Devon, Austyn Moore, Jenaveve Jolie and Randy Spears. The triple disc set offers both standard and WMV-HD DVD formats. Additional features include 16x9 Widescreen Format, Bloopers, Casting Video, Photo Gallery, Audio Commentary with the Stars, Behind the Scenes, Visual FX Making of, HD Behind the Scenes, Pirates Short, Bios, Trailers, Chapter Index and No Regional Coding.
More information on the release can be found at www.piratesxxx.com or www.digitalplayground.com.
