Shout! Factory Acquires Westchester Films.....for DIGITAL distribution (1 Viewer)

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/shout-factory-acquires-westchester-films-736617

IMO, some sad news here (in terms of blu-ray and physical media). The Westchester films include rights to more than 400 films including The Marx Brothers’ A Night in Casablanca (1946), Orson Welles’ Othello (1952), Fanny (1961) starring Leslie Caron, Hell’s Angels on Wheels with Jack Nicholson (1967), The Romantic Englishwoman (1975) starring Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson, The Stunt Man (1980) with Peter O’Toole, Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant (1980), Ronald Neame's Hopscotch, and eight Godzilla films, including the 1954 original. I believe the library also includes John Ford's The Long Voyage Home.

The article states that Shout! Factory is seeking to diversify beyond DVD sales and aiming to launch a digital channel this year. “We want to continue to grow our nonphysical distribution business,” Shout! president and co-founder Garson Foos said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “This is a really good strategic move for us to acquire Westchester Films. Most of its revenue is from broadcast and digital. Going forward, we want to acquire libraries with significant digital and broadcast revenue streams.”

Shout! also purchased the ITV library a couple of years ago and still have yet to release many of those films on DVD and/or BD, which makes me wonder if they're holding them back for digital distribution as well.

The only saving grace is that some of these titles in Westchester's library (Hitchcock's Foreigh Correspondent and Ford's Stagecoach) have already received BD releases via Criterion. I wonder if Shout! will be willing to sub-license other titles in the future to Criterion, et al for physical releases.

Since Westchester's rights only seem to extend to digital broadband, pay TV, VOD, satellite and broadcast networks, it may be a moot point asking about physical media. This could be a situation like Park Circus.

This is much ado about nothing as far as I can tell. Criterion's contracts with Westchester were stamped out years ago and Shout! aren't the kind of guys who hold on to licenses like utter kleptos like a certain OTHER distribution Erie Studio.

Breaker Morant already had a Blu-ray release from Image*. The Romantic Englishwoman is currently available from Kino Lorber. Ditto for The Stunt Man from Severin.

Does this deal mean those licenses are now kaput?

* Long out of print though...

grandfathered, maybe?

It wouldn't have made much difference if Shout! had been planning to do home video releases because they never seem to go out of their way to remaster their acquired films. Westchester certainly doesn't seem interested in doing that on their own either and are perfectly happy using aged SD transfers.

We'll probably get some cheap DVDs of some of these which is generally about as good as it gets for the Westchester library. The Criterion releases were exceptional, but only a tiny fraction of tent-poles ultimately. The vast majority weren't likely to get more than a Hulu stream.

Why is this sad? Whether it's from Criterion or Shout! generally the films will receive a great treatment. Besides, Shout's affiliation with iTV hasn't affected Criterion's licenses.

If anything, Criterion and Shout! working together would benefit both studios greatly.

Patrick McCart said:

Why is this sad? Whether it's from Criterion or Shout! generally the films will receive a great treatment. Besides, Shout's affiliation with iTV hasn't affected Criterion's licenses.

If anything, Criterion and Shout! working together would benefit both studios greatly.

Click to expand...

My "sadness" is more that this is just another move towards digital platforms vs. physical releases, especially for lesser known/deep catalog titles. While I do watch some streaming content, my preference is to own a physical copy.

Although many of ITV's titles are on BD in the UK (Capricorn One, The Boys from Brazil) in region-free versions, I've still been disappointed in Shout!'s relatively low amount of BD releases of the ITV catalog. Many titles (the ones mentioned in my previous sentence, On Golden Pond and others) have not received a release yet, and Shout! has chosen to release many of the titles as DVD-only releases. I just hope we see some BD releases of Westchester's library, especially Ford's The Long Voyage Home.