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Originally Posted by Michael Brooke  And most are realistically never going to get one. The problem is, with the best will in the world, these are going to be ultra-niche titles, and if brand new masters have to be created (and material tracked down in the first place) they're going to be unavoidably expensive to produce.
I've overseen plenty of projects where we knew from the start that they were probably going to lose money, but we went ahead anyway because we wanted to do it. And I'm hugely grateful to Arrow, Indicator or whoever for knowingly taking that risk - and am particularly thrilled when they get an unexpected hit out of something like, say, Hard to Be a God. Unexpected hits are always much more satisfying than longed-for ones!
Which is why any label worth its salt needs reliable cash cows that end up subsidising this stuff - licensing aside, I doubt something like The Wolf of Wall Street cost very much to produce as a perfectly good master should already exist for a 2013 film that's already had a BD release.
Sometimes these can be quite surprising - film buffs largely ignore the BFI's British Transport Films collections, but there's a reason why they've gone to fourteen double-disc volumes, multiple reissues and a best-of Blu-ray compilation. (In terms of still ongoing return on original investment, that catalogue was one of the best acquisitions the BFI ever made.) |
Michael, its good to have you on here to bring us down to earth with the reality of the business side of things even if its not always what we want to hear. Its just frustrating that the only way we can get some stuff is through expensive imports.
Question: is it a feasible business strategy for a UK label to form a partnership with someone, like say, Vinegar Syndrome and make use of the transfers that they have already put the heavy lifting into? It would seem to me to be a sensible way to spread the risk?