Vudu and Walmart launch Twilight Eclipse movie cross-promotion

Vudu continues to cash in on the relationship with its new parent company, Walmart. Starting on Saturday, Walmart will begin selling the Twilight Eclipse movie in the form of DVDs and Blu-ray discs in all of its stores. In each one of those copies, Walmart will provide a coupon for a $5 movie credit on Vudu.

If you’re not familiar with the Twilight series, it’s the vampire movie of choice for 20 million American teenage girls (I think the movies are pretty good too), thanks to stars like Robert Pattinson. Fans will now be able to buy a physical copy of the film and watch it on their home DVD players or Blu-ray players as well as watch a streamed digital copy of the film on any of their connected devices, such as laptops, Boxee set-tops, or connected TVs.

Vudu also offers over 4,000 high-definition movies to choose from, including the original Twilight and Twilight New Moon movies. On Nov. 1, Vudu and Walmart did the same thing with the DVD and Blu-ray purchases of Toy Story 3. The idea is to make the Walmart version of the movie more attractive in order to get more customers. And Vudu itself allows the world’s biggest physical store retailer to dip its toes in the water of digital distribution.

Now that Walmart and Vudu have combined forces, they can encourage users to buy their combination of a physical movie and its digital version for the same price. The combination of retail and digital online distribution is likely to be a powerful one for many businesses. GameStop, the biggest video game retailer, bought the digital online game portal Kongregate in order to execute on the same kind of plan. The big plus is that the retailers get a huge amount of foot traffic and can point those consumers to digital properties while they’re in the stores.

Vudu announced last week that it would make its streaming movies available on the PC, the Mac, and the Boxee set-top box for the TV via D-Link’s Boxee service. Walmart bought Santa Clara, Calif.-based Vudu in the spring as part of its move into digital distribution of movies. Vudu has 55 employees. Its rivals include Apple TV, Amazon and CinemaNow.