Warner may own MGM Update: Sony/Columbia buys MGM (1 Viewer)

[Lee Scoggins]

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the companies believe they will own collectively 50% of all color movies that have been made.

 

[Reagan]

My biggest fear is that all of the Bond re-issues (whether they are called Superbit or something else) will have a bit of that magical Sony EE sprinkled on and look like Die Another Day. Of course nothing is certain, but if Warner had been in charge, there would have been no worries on my part.

-Reagan

 

[Mark Zimmer]

Oh, now we can look forward to James Bond with extra added edge enhancement. Lovely.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

I think we may want to give Sony a chance on the BluRay discs before assuming the worst. I was at HE2004 in May and Sony had prepared some hidef discs at 1080i and was displaying them on the flagship Qualia projector and they looked fantastic. If they deliver this quality I don't think anyone here will be disappointed. It was the trailers for Spiderman 2 and 50 First Dates. I saw no motion artifacts at all on the Spiderman action scenes!

 

[Patrick McCart]

Just keep hoping that Columbia doesn't cancel the LDI restoratons/remasters. If we get LDI masters on the DVD's, we won't have to worry about it.

 

[Joshua_W]

Here's a very disturbing thought... if Sony is indeed now sitting on 40-50% of all movies ever made, they don't even have to release them at all in BluRay format. It benefits them if the cannot be released to HD-DVD, or even standard DVD.

The question is, do they plan on releasing this vast new library to BluRay, or did they buy it out to cripple the other formats? If it's the latter, then they don't even have to bother releasing anything. It just benefits them that no one else can.

Yes, I'm sure they'll be releasing the Bond films, and anything else "big," but I fear they won't give two shits about anything else. Look at all of the cult movies MGM has been releasing... The Midnight Movies, stuff like "Equus" and "1984," "Flesh + Blood," ... I don't think Sony would give a damn about any of those. Hell, how often do old horror and sci-fi movies trickle out of their catalog onto DVD? One or two a year? And now these guys are sitting on four out of every ten movies ever made?

And let's not forget Sony's poor track record with forcing new formats onto consumers. MiniDisc, anyone?
I fear this is a sad, sad day for cinema.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Such comments make very little business sense to me, so please, explain your reasoning for it because Sony has partners in this venture and they just spent a great deal of cash for this film library.







Crawdaddy

 

[Eric Huffstutler]

With so many people investing in DVDs over a relatively short period of time and more in the wings, I can't help but think that those who would also like Blu-Ray DVDs in their collection... that there would be some sort of backward compatibility with players? Any word on that?

Eric

 

[Bryan Tuck]

Well, I think I would have preferred Warner to have gotten MGM, as they probably would have taken better care of the older films for DVD, but I dunno...I guess I'll wait and see what happens.

However, I keep reading things, such as that Bloomberg article, that suggest not everyone is doing their homework. The article mentions Ben-Hur as being one of the films in the deal, when in actuality, it and all of the rest of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's pre-1986 output has been owned by Warner for some time now. With the post-1986 MGM catalogue, the entire United Artists library, plus the Embassy and Orion libraries, this is a big aqcuisition for Sony, but not quite as big as some people seem to think.

As for The Hobbit, as Sean and several others have pointed out, it's no less likely now than it has been. How in the world MGM got the distribution rights only is beyond me, but there's a lot of money to be made here, so I think it's possible Sony and Time Warner could come to an agreement once everything gets settled. Peter Jackson and Co. are busy at the moment, anyway.

I wonder, though, if Sony will allow MGM to keep its name, or if all new films will be released under the Columbia label. Not a huge deal I guess, and I know MGM today is a pale shadow of the Golden Age company of the same name, but it would be a shame to see Leo completely disappear from movie screens. And any future James Bond films sure would look funny with the Columbia lady in front of them.

I guess they could put her in a bikini. :p)

 

[Cees Alons]

Has been done already (in fact, she steps down in a bikini from behind what appears to be a "gown-facade").


Cees

 

[Ken Horowitz]

The articles I saw this morning mentioned "40% of all COLOR movies". (And, of course, any of these percentages refer strictly to US films.)

MGM owns just a few dozen films that predate 1950.

 

[Jonathan_Clarke]

This may be a dumb question but does MGM now cease to exist? Or is Sony the parent company like WB/New Line?

Are all the MGM discs going out of print?

 

[Jason^G]

DVD aficionados since 1997 have decided not to purchase millions of WB DVDs solely because they came in snapper cases.


Seven Years
10 skipped purchases a year
$15 per title
Half a million DVD Aficionados who refused to buy snapper cases

7 * 10 * 15 * 500,000

We withheld $525 million and purchased 35 million fewer units because of our silly dislike of snappers.


Did OUR boycott of snapper cases factor into Time Warner’s last minute decision to drop their bit to buy the MGM library?

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Are you serious??? It DOUBLED the number of titles Sony controls...

 

[Joshua_W]

As long as Sony (and their BluRay format) are sitting on a large library of films, it benefits them even if they don't release them because nobody else can release them to a different format. They've just bought out a major competitor. And now a major studio can't align itself with another format.

The question becomes, what are Sony's intentions with regard to MGM's catalog? Do they actually want to release all of these movies onto DVD or BluRay? Or do they just want to insure that they have a large back-catalog on paper? Or do they want to prevent other formats from releasing a decent-sized chunk of the collective film library?

At times, it feels like Sony -- a hardware manufacturer who has recently gotten into software -- is more concerned with having a dominant format than anything else.

The question is, what kind of business model will Sony be running when they roll out BluRay? I don't know, but if all we have to judge them is their performance with DVD, it's kind of disappointing. So far, we've a seen a poor treatment of their catalog with an emphasis on releasing newer movies in multiple versions. (Resident Evil is on its THIRD release.) Should we expect their output to be any different when it comes to BluRay?

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Bond and Pink Panther are definitely pre-1986.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

IMHO Yes. Hidef is an entirely different ballgame.

 

[Brian PB]

These are all United Artists properties. MGM merged with UA in 1981, but the UA films were NOT included in the deal with Ted Turner in 1986.
[edited to correct mis-information]

 

[Brian PB]

Interesting facts:

From MGM's webpage:

 

[Eric Huffstutler]

You're kidding Cees? What movie was this in?

Eric