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Originally Posted by Paul@TheOverlook  It would seem that Sony has lost interest in releasing any catalogue product on Blu-ray at all and has struck licencing deals left and right in the US (TT, Mill Creek, Criterion, Grindhouse Releasing, etc) - which is an incredibly odd move considering its consumer electronics division was responsible for introducing the format to market, especially when you also take into account the commitment other majors continue to make. It should be also pointed out that Nick Redman (co-founder of Twilight Time) has said that the 3000 figure is not something that they've stumbled upon haphazardly, it's a number that works for almost everything they've done (and is derived from the ltd ed soundtrack CDs he was responsible for releasing from back in the 1990s too), but as you say, occasionally a title will come along that takes them by surprise but those (namely Body Double Christine, Fright Night and Night of the Living Dead) and anomalies, most takes months to sell out.
It's certainly odd that Sony has not released Fright Night or Christine elsewhere given how quickly the TT discs sold out but sitting on something and being canny is a typical studio trait - studio execs don't have the confidence to follow through with something but don't want to give someone else the opportunity to make a success either - so keeping hold of something and doing nothing with it becomes the safest option. It's very frustrating, I know, as I really want Fright Night and was unable to buy it at the time as I was seriously skint. But hey ho - my point stands though - if people want to own some of these titles they should embrace the TT releases and as I also mentioned, Screen Archives is customs friendly too  |
Not sure I wholly agree. It's impossible to set an ideal number for a print run and expect that to work with everything. The only people 'surprised' with the sales of Fright Night were TT themselves. I know I was working at Blockbuster at the time and we got a whole bunch of Fright Night DVD's into our store based on the fact sony were backing the major theatrical release of the remake and we sold out of them all. Personally I would love to own those TT discs and I don't think the discs themselves are overly dear, it's more the postage. I have a real problem with items going missing in the post so there is no way i'd risk the cheaper postage option as TT refuse point blank tu guarantee anything that way. The more expensive postage is almost the same price as the disc which makes them eye wateringly expensive.
I would argue that each territory needs its own equivalent of TT if the studios want to release stuff this way to give fans outside of America a chance at owning these titles rather than being forced to seek them out VOD or worse still piracy. The days of massive print runs are over, I think most would agree with that. But these films need to still be available/accessible to viewers in some form simply as a deterrent to piracy.