"Crash" is crashing forward to set a new awards precedent. Its studio Lionsgate is sending DVD screeners to all 100,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild.

"I was surprised to learn that it had never been done before and I was surprised to find out how inexpensive it is," Lionsgate president Tom Ortenberg tells GoldDerby. "DVDs can be pressed cheaply. Sending them out is barely more expensive than the letter mailings that major studios are already doing to the full SAG membership in order to invite them to screenings."

Other studios don't send out such a huge number of screeners because of piracy fears. The batches shipped to other award groups are relatively small: 6,000 to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, 5,000 to the British Academy of Film and TV Arts, 2,000 to the Producers Guild of America, 2,100 to the SAG nominating committee, 500 to various U.S. film critics. Lionsgate sent "Crash" to all of those groups plus the 13,000 members of the Writers Guild of America, but it's been erroneously reported that it was the first studio to send screeners to the scribes. So far Lionsgate has sent out about 30,000 DVDs as part of "Crash's" awards campaign. That compares to about 4 million shipped to stores. It's widely believed that "Crash" sent out the most DVDs to award voters over all this season. Now that will certainly be the case.

"We're in a position to take advantage of our unique position in the awards race," Ortenberg adds.

"Crash" debuted at cinemas back in May and came out on DVD Sept. 6. The non-watermarked DVD has been out so long that there's now little risk of major financial loss due to piracy. That's not true of other early-year releases that are just now debuting on DVD like "The Constant Gardener," "Hustle & Flow" and "In Her Shoes."

"People used to say that coming out early in the year was a bad idea," Ortenberg says. "Maybe now they'll reconsider. I have a hunch that more studios will be doing this soon."