According to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, Disney has struck an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart to distribute The 3 Wise Men (2003) through that store only, from the DVD’s November 1 release date through the end of the year. The film is a French-Spanish co-production, but it sounds like the DVD will have only a Spanish track in addition to the brand-new English track, which will feature the voices of Martin Sheen, his son Emilio Estevez, Christian recording artist Jaci Velasquez, and others.
The Reporter says the film, which was released theatrically in Spain and France, was produced by Arenas Entertainment and animated by Animagicstudio, “whose principals are veterans of such Disney hits as Fantasia 2000, Hercules and Tarzan.” One Disney VP tells the paper this film “appeals to three of Wal-Mart’s core demographic groups — family, Latino and Christian”.
This is not the first time Sheen, a devout Catholic, has taken part in a Nativity play. Twenty years ago, he starred in The Fourth Wise Man (1985), an adaptation of Henry van Dyke’s The Story of the Other Wise Man, in which a magus named Artaban sees the sign in the heavens and begins a life-long search for the Messiah — missing Christmas, but ultimately finding Easter. FWIW, Sheen’s son Charlie has a bit part in that film as a menacing Roman soldier; this was before his amusing cameo in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), to say nothing of his star-making role in Platoon (1986).
Anyway, back to The 3 Wise Men. The question for me is whether this DVD will be available in Canada. Back when DreamWorks released The Prince of Egypt (1998), they put out a special exclusive CD through Wal-Mart that had bits of the film’s Hans Zimmer score that you couldn’t find anywhere else — and this CD was unavailable at the local Wal-Marts that I checked.
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