Background - I just watched the movie The Hitman. It reeked. The story didn't make sense; it seemed more an excuse to string together gun-fu scenes than anything coherent.

"So? What do you expect?" you say.

Actually, nothing more than that. I'm more interested in why the film was made.

"Because the video games it was based on were successful."

Okay, I didn't play the video games, so I can't say I can dig beyond that. But I watched the film on Blu-Ray, and, well, it reeked.

This is worth noting because Blu-Ray is still relatively new technology. Studios understand it's will succeed, and that they can mint money by releasing films already released to VHS, Laser Disc, and DVD on this new medium.

However, this is still a costly process. And, even if not, there is still a queue of films to release. That The Hitman was released to Blu-Ray at all means it is successful enough that the studio thought it deserved to be head of the queue.

Now, a film can be moved up or down by many other factors besides success - there could be logistics in securing additional rights, or scheduling against a competing studio's releasing a similar film, or ... Well, I'm not in the industry, so I can't think of any other reasons.

The point is this: I can't think of a reason to release The Hitman on Blu-Ray at all, much less ahead of other films that did better, or were better received, or both.

It's late, and my thoughts on why this is the case are jumbled. I'll write more on it next time, but comments are, as always, welcomed.