Renters and retailers expect decent demand for Equinoxe Films' Beowulf & Grendel, slated to street on July 18.

Speaking to Playback a week before its release, Marc Beauséjour, Equinoxe director of video, Canada, confirmed that Blockbuster Video alone ordered 10,000 copies of the disc to rent at its 400-plus locations. Beauséjour expects to have shipped more than 30,000 units for its initial rentals drop in Canada - a sizeable but not overwhelming number for an English-Canadian title.

"But there has also been interest on the retailer side," says Beauséjour, adding that Amazon.ca - where director Sturla Gunnarsson's take on the epic Anglo-Saxon poem has been among the top sellers leading up to its release - ordered another 3,100 to fill its preorder needs. "The title needs to be promoted once it is out, but we're expecting to ship about 40,000 [total copies] when all is said and done."

The details of Equinoxe's promotional efforts were still being determined at press time. The picture topped the Canadian-made box office in March and is currently in limited release in the U.S.

The release is "fully loaded" with extra materials, says Beauséjour, including a commentary by Gunnarsson and a featurette about the cast's experiences working on the film, and they hold little back when reflecting on the often-difficult Icelandic shoot.

FogoLabs nets nine DVD noms

Montreal production house FogoLabs - specializing in live-concert DVD production - received nine nominations from the 2006 Annual DVD Awards, trailing only Fox and Buena Vista Home Entertainment going into the Aug. 8 awards ceremony in Los Angeles, to be hosted by film critic Leonard Maltin.

Fogo, headed by brothers Pierre and François Lamoureux, garnered two nominations in the best music performance category and seven more in four independent technical categories for menu design, video presentation, authoring design and audio presentation.

The shop's Rush: R30 - 30th Anniversary World Tour and The Brian Setzer Orchestra Christmas Extravaganza vie against Paramount Home Entertainment's Neil Young: Heart of Gold and others for best musical. Rush butts heads with Fogo's Collective Soul: Home DVD in the menu design and video presentation categories, and is nommed against Fogo's Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis: A Duo Occasion in the audio presentation category. R30 is the lone title by the Lamoureuxs up for authoring design.

The brothers won two awards at last year's show, including best music performance disc for The Stray Cats: Rumble in Brixton.

ThinkFilm scored three nominations, all in the best independent theatrical category, for its docs The Boys of Baraka, The Aristocrats and Murderball, against only Howl's Moving Castle from Buena Vista. Lionsgate is up for major theatrical new release with Crash: Director's Cut, and twice in the doc category for Rize and Grizzly Man.

Also...

* Kevin DeWalt, head of Saskatchewan prodco Minds Eye Entertainment, says his CBC miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story is still available at most home video retailers and rental outfits despite its controversial suspension by CBC. Contrary to some reports, "it hasn't been pulled everywhere," says DeWalt. "[CBC wouldn't] have the right to do that... HMV here in Regina has plenty."

* Toronto's Paradox Entertainment will be the exclusive Canadian distributor of 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Ultimate Edition DVD, set to street on Sept. 26. The two-disc set, put together by U.S. distrib Dark Sky Films, will include two feature-length docs about the film and a blooper reel, to better remind us that it was all just a movie. *