Release and Reception
A teaser trailer, released in late February 2008, featured principal cast members, including Rincewind, Twoflower, Trymon and the Arch-Astronomer of Krull, attempting to describe octarine, the 'colour of magic'. The teaser concludes with the film's tagline: "a pigment of your imagination". Two more trailers were released in March 2008, containing a more complete synopsis, with narration by Brian Cox. The trailers formed part of a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign in partnership with Amazon.com and Borders Books. In addition to conventional adverts in national newspapers and banner ads on sites including MSN.com and Yahoo!.com, Sky launched a viral marketing campaign, and established a bluetooth hotspot at Victoria station, London, where fans could download video clips and ringtones to mobile phones.
The film was premiered at the Curzon Cinema, London, on 3 March 2008; the event was covered in several major newspapers after David Jason, somewhat inebriated, got into the wrong limousine by mistake when departing from the premiere.
The film was released in two parts, breaking at roughly the same place as the literary versions of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, although some scenes (such as Trymon's murder of the Archchancellor) were moved across the break for dramatic effect. The first part, concluding with Rincewind and Twoflower falling off the edge of the disk in the Krullian spaceship, was broadcast on Easter Sunday (23 March 2008), at 6pm GMT on Sky One and Sky One HD. The second part was broadcast on the same channels at 6pm the following day (Easter Monday). Viewing audience for the first part reached 1.5 million, 8% of the viewing total. The second part of the film attracted an average audience of 967,000, peaking at 1.1 million during the 15 minute block from 7:15 pm.
The film was generally well received by critics, with The Times believing it to be "better than Sky's previous Discworld adaptation Hogfather". The Scotsman admitted that it was a "good-looking production that proper fans probably appreciated", but criticised the film for being "far too long... with leaden direction and script". The Times agreed, saying that "It looked good, in an over-glossy, Hallmark Productions kind of way, although every now and again the budget... looked stretched".
Pratchett himself said he was "very pleased" with the casting and production of the film, although he admitted that seeing his literary work adapted for the screen was "very bad for me: it's like I'm wandering around on the inside of my own head".
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on the 3rd November 2008.
In the United States and Canada, it is premiering as The Color of Magic on the Ion channel.
The North American DVD was released on July 14, 2009. It is considerably shorter (132 min) than the British version (184 min). The version available on Netflix is the original British presentation.
Read more about this topic: Terry Pratchett's The Colour Of Magic
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