Well, the "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" motion picture is about to be released on DVD. Makes sense. It had a theatrical release in mid April and now is about time a movie like that would go to DVD. After all, it has some money to make before it can be called a success. According to IMDB, "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" made $4,563,873 in box office revenues after the producers spent about $6.5 million to make the movie. A bit of a box office bomb.
One of the most important aspects of selling a DVD is the box cover. It is what the customer sees before he decides to make the purchase. Well, the producers went ahead and printed them all up before looking at what they were printing. Chris Moody from The Ticket explains it best:
The company behind the film Atlas Shrugged Part 1 is replacing 100,000 title sheets from the film's newly released DVD and Blue Ray versions because the copy writer incorrectly described the late Ayn Rand's 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, as a story of "self-sacrifice."
Put simply, that's like calling Michael Moore a tea partier.
Rand, who in 1964 published a collection of essays called the The Virtue of Selfishness, renounced self-sacrifice on principle. She famously argued that altruism must be rejected "if any civilization is to survive."
The odd thing here is that they went to print without any system of proofing. As a person who works in the graphic design industry, it seems odd that an important piece of marketing material could get the green-light at the copywriting stage. It typically goes to an editor or product manager before printing. Oh well, just tack the price onto the $6.5 million in production costs.