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Originally Posted by Patrick McCart
It might be a mistake on Warner's part concerning Buddy Buddy. The theatrical poster clearly says it's from MGM, but distributed by UA. Network was in the same position and WB obviously released that.
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An understandable confusion, but not the case............
MGM withdrew from film distribution at the end of 1973, and signed a 10 year deal for domestic theatrical distribution with United Artists. (Int'l went to CIC).
The company was scaled back to making only 3-4 movies per year, and those went through UA domestically.
NETWORK was a special case. It was a co-production between MGM and United Artists. MGM had domestic rights, and UA had foreign. That still is the situation today, except that Warner Bros. is the successor-in-interest to old MGM, and "NEW MGM" owns the UA holdings.
MGM decided to take a stab at getting back into full scale film production, and prepared an ambitious, and star-laden slate that looked great (on paper).
BUDDY, BUDDY was one of those films, and it was set for a Xmas 1981 release. Meanwhile, post-Heaven's Gate, United Artists went down the tubes, and its parent company Transamerica, was hungry to get out of the movie business. Kerkorian ended up buying UA and merging the two companies. By the time BUDDY, BUDDY came out, MGM owned UA, but most of the ads and posters of the era still had a UA logo on them.
Meanwhile, back to the rights issue...my guess is it could be related to the French play and 1973 film called "L'Emmerdeur" (by Francis Veber) which was the source material on which BUDDY, BUDDY was based. The original French movie starred Lino Ventura and was called "A PAIN IN THE A**" when released here in the states.
A remake of that film is due out this year, so this underlying rights trail may be the reason why BUDDY, BUDDY is in limbo.....