SONY and Paramount - where is your classics out put for 2010? (1 Viewer)

[Greg_M]

Sony has only a few titles scheduled for Blu-ray this year - "The Karate Kid I & II" and "The Natural" - where's the rest?

Whatever happened to "Lawrence of Arabia" "Bridge on the River Kawi" "Funny Girl"?

Paramount has "The African Queen" but that's about all. It's already March and there are no anouncements through mid year?

Even Fox and Universal are pretty silm (At least "Spartacus" is coming)

 

[Brandon Conway]

Other than Q1 and Q2 often being slow like this for catalog releases, I think we're seeing the effects of a down economy as well. These releases aren't done in a vacuum, and prepping them takes several months, if not a year or more. Many releases that would have needed to be green lit long ago probably weren't due to financial reasons.

 

[Richard Gallagher]

I can't speak for Paramount, but Sony is now announcing titles only about 60 days prior to the street date. Right now there is nothing on Sony's official release list after May 18, so it's too early to speculate about what the rest of the year will bring.

 

[Daniel Bakken]

The Ten Commandments from Paramount was rumored at the Digital Bits over 2 years ago for BR, what happened? Does anyone know if it is because of restoration work? I'd be OK if that were the reason.

 

[ajabrams]

Paramount indeed seems to be very reticent about issuing their classics on BD -- maybe they're waiting to see how AFRICAN QUEEN does. I can't imagine that it won't sell well.

 

[Paul Arnette]

African Queen would probably sell even more if it included a lossless audio track. I've pretty much given up on Paramount because even when they do release a classic they always find some way to screw it up.

 

[MatthewA]

Originally Posted by ajabrams

Paramount indeed seems to be very reticent about issuing their classics on BD -- maybe they're waiting to see how AFRICAN QUEEN does. I can't imagine that it won't sell well.

That's no different than how they were about classics on DVD over the past few years.

 

[Rick Thompson]

Most of what's being released on Blu-ray are movies where it really doesn't matter. Does anyone enjoy "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" more on Blu-ray than DVD? Does anyone think the format makes any difference? To use William Goldman's phrase, a lot of Blu-rays now are a case of "washing garbage." When you're done, it's still garbage.

 

[Dick]

But Sony has some eagerly-awaited Oscar-winners that could hugely benefit from Blu, including the aforementioned BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (which I hope doesn't get shoved back to await its 2012 55th anniversary), LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, OLIVER! ON THE WATERFRONT...

The sad fact is, while these will eventually get their HD release, the ratio of consumers standing in line to buy these as opposed to, say, DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS? is probably very small, so why rush? Looking at it optimistically, perhaps Sony is putting an enormous amount of time and effort into rerstorations of these classics, thus the long wait.