Batman ('60s series) STILL NOT coming to DVD! (Major update post #52) (1 Viewer)

[Tony J Case]

So to summerize: abandon all hope, for the sun will grow cold and burn itself out before this set ever happens.

 

[Charles Ellis]

I would love to have the major media covering this story. Why haven't The New York Times, TV Guide or even People done a story on this? Instead on doing fluff on Brigitte Nielsen's latest plastic surgery, Entertainment Tonight should do an in-depth story as to the fight over getting Batman to DVD!!!!

 

[David Lambert]

Well, my paycheck says "TV Guide".

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Because 16-24 year old girls don't care anything about a 40-year old TV show! Almost everybody's chasing the same "youth" demographic groups that everyone else is.

Besides, more media coverage may not be a good thing: you might get more people crawling out of the woodwork thinking they need a piece of the pie.

 

[Jason Seaver]

The LITG story also mentions that it wouldn't be a straight one-for-one trade: Fox would get a bunch of money in addition to the Batman TV series rights.

 

[Sam Favate]

Outstanding work, Dave. This is the best summation of the situation I have ever read, and I have been following this story since the first TV-on-DVD set arrived circa 2000.

Let's hope that, maybe, if true, the Watchmen thing will at least start a chain of events that leads to the release.

 

[David Lambert]

Thank you!

 

[RickER]

If this does come out....to quote the movie Heathers, "**** me gently with a chainsaw!"

I never get to use good quotes.

Next mission Dave, get Universal and Dimension to work out a deal for The Six Million Dollar Man.

 

[David Lambert]

Sure, thing, I'll get right to work on that! :rolleyes

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Six Million Dollar Man????? Just get a cheap region free player , buy the sets from region 2 and youre all set, so simple.I could never understand this business of being loyal to one region.I own dvds from every part of the world.If lets say for example, Batman 66 was made legally available, in a lavish region 2 set, and still no region 1, you guys would still wait???? !!!!

 

[troy evans]

Yeah Dave, chop chop. We all can't sit around forever while you tvguide guys have all these shows hidden away in some secret vault. Now hurry up and hammer out that damn distribution deal with all the involved studios. Time is short.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

If only we could get Oprah on the case. She did wonders for the Mary Tyler Moore show.

Oprah and a million harpy march would get Batman released!

 

[John DeAngelis]

Amen to that! Very impressive, Dave!

 

[RickER]

OK, what have you done for us TODAY dave.!

But really, thanks for all the info you post.

Tony, the amount of stuff i would want from R2? Lets see...T6MDM, and thats it. Not worth it, for me. I use my Blu-ray players for DVD play back also. I sure wont be doing a region hack on a machine that could get bricked if they didnt like the hack. I only have 1 friend that has a R free player (he got it so he could watch T6MDM), and thats actually less than the number of people i know with Blu-ray players!

 

[FrancisP]

It certainly looks like Fox has Warner by the nose. Turnabout is fair play. I think that it depends on how big the Watchmen film is expected to be. If Watchmen is expected to be a huge film then it seems unlikely that the Batman series would be the reason the film doesn't get released.

It is right that Warner's theatrical division cannot order DC comics to go along but the theatrical division likely has a working relationship with DC comics due to the Batman and Superman movies. It is possible that the theatrical division could try to broker a compromise with DC and Fox. I don't expect anything since the movie is not scheduled to be released until March. If by March 1, the only thing standing between a huge payoff is Batman, I don't see how the head of Time Warner doesn't get dragged in.

As for the people involved in the show, you almost certainly would have to deal with Greenway Productions.

The rest of it depends on whether standard industry contracts were used or
Greenway's were written up differently. If they were standard contracts then it is likely most issues mentioned are likely not issues. If they used different contracts then it could be a Pandora's box.

It certainly looks like Fox has Warner by the nose. Turnabout is fair play. I think that it depends on how big the Watchmen film is expected to be. If Watchmen is expected to be a huge film then it seems unlikely that the Batman series would be the reason the film doesn't get released.

It is right that Warner's theatrical division cannot order DC comics to go along but the theatrical division likely has a working relationship with DC comics due to the Batman and Superman movies. It is possible that the theatrical division could try to broker a compromise with DC and Fox. I don't expect anything since the movie is not scheduled to be released until March.
If by March 1, the only thing standing between a huge payoff is Batman, I don't see how the head of Time Warner doesn't get dragged in.

As for the people involved in the show, you almost certainly would have to deal with Greenway Productions.

The rest of it depends on whether standard industry contracts were used or
Greenway's were written up differently. If they were standard contracts then it is likely most issues mentioned are likely not issues. If they used different contracts then it could be a Pandora's box.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Well, I myself am certainly not "region-loyal", but I, too, have held off of buying the R2/4 "Bionic" sets. Why? Not loyalty, but for several reasons:

1. I want to wait for R1s so that I can buy sets that's aren't affected by the 4% PAL speedup
2. The screwups with the three $6M Man pilot movies (which is especially odd when the first two came out in their original forms on PAL-VHS just a few years prior)
3. The supposed bad picture quality on the $6M Man sets (though, this being Universal, I don't imagine we can expect any remastering, maybe the Stateside materials are in better shape than the ones used for the PAL releases).
4. The sets aren't high prioirity with me. I have all of the previous single-disc R2s, as well as the previous VHSes from both shows, so I have more than enough Bionic material to get a "fix" on for now.

I guess I'm just different from most people, but there's no way I'd ever want to limit myself to just one region. There's plenty of foreign programming I like that I could just never believe is going to come out in R1, or will take ages to do so. I guess the majority of Americans are really only interested in American shows.

 

[EricSchulz]

Dave:

I grew up watching this show (and occasionally check out the reruns on MEtv), but really have no interest in buying this title. Having said that, the article you posted was FASCINATING reading and gives people like me great insight into the complicated "behind the scenes" stuff that goes into these titles. Great job!

 

[Chris Lockwood]

Just curious- did any Batman episodes ever come out on VHS, laserdisc, or any other format?

 

[Charles Ellis]

No, just the 1966 feature film.