Fall of the Roman Empire to be released on April 29 (1 Viewer)

[Mark Anthony]

Can we take it, then that sales have not been as expected?

If so it's fully deserved, i'll bet the cost of producing all the extra's, although fabuluous, wouldn't have been far off the cost of creating a new transfer from 8 perf. What a strange priority of expenditure...

M

 

[OliverK]

Mark, I doubt that the extras of the El Cid DVD would cost as much as new large format elements and the derived master for DVD and HD. And even if that would be the case you are still barking up the wrong tree. Weinstein does not own these movies, they are licensees and as such they are limited both with regard to territory and timeframe in which they could reap the benefits of such an investment. As much as I like the extras on El Cid I would gladly have gone with a barebones edition with superior video and audio quality but it is the owners who would have to pay for that, not Weinstein.

 

[OliverK]

That would be something - a great DVD, a fantastic Blu-Ray and Fall of the Roman Empire for the first time in theaters in Ultra Panavision ! This would be a good time for such a print as Khartoum is in the works, too. And I think we all hope for a new UP print of Ben Hur for 2009

 

[PatrickDA]

Was the budget for "FOTRE" $19-20 million or $28 million? I had always heard
the first number, but the recent Bronston book put out the latter number.

 

[PatrickDA]

It's the truth, sorry it hurts and/or hit close to home. Secondly, was
Moses supposed to be non-wimpy? I didn't see that character as
being a warrior or anything. Heston's a stiff...no shame in that. I
wish he'd delivered more performances like the one he gave in
Branagh's "Hamlet"...now that had some power to it.

 

[Mark Anthony]

Barking up what tree?

Instead of paying for extra's, Weinstein could have spent the money, with the owner's permission, to create a new 65mm element and transfer. No owner would be likely to refuse them as the elements are just sitting there untouched.

As is they have paid for a dvd producer, film equipment hire, possible payment of interviewee's, hotel fee's, flights to various parts of the world....they have also paid for a hi-def transfer from the extent 35mm element and clean-up of that.

RAH has already said the approx cost of creating a new 65mm intermediate element from 8 perf, hi-def transfer from that and clean-up would be around $200K, I can't see all the above being much less than that, and let's face it it's less than they spend on cigar's in a year!

M

 

[Simon Howson]

You'd like to think they have some money left over from Pulp Fiction to fund this.

 

[OliverK]

While I doubt that the numbers add up with regard to the total costs you assume for this DVD it still does not matter. It is NOT their movie - it is already unusual that Weinstein as a licensee had to do their own HD transfer which by the way can be had for much less than 200k.

So of course they COULD spend the money to do these movies right but that is not how it is usually done in these cases, often not even when a company actually does own a large format title up for release. A good example would be the HD-DVD of Spartacus that did not really get the VIP treatment by Universal, certainly an even bigger travesty given the fact that this is a title Universal does own and that they never did right, not even on DVD.

And I like your point about the cigars - smoke less and create more large format elements from the OCN should be their motto

 

[Mark Anthony]

Oliver we're well aware it's not their movie, but given this is their flagship colllection, they've paid the owner's for rights and for a transfer, a little extra money could have made this look as it should, therfore it's a disgrace that they've been so cheap.

I wonder what "Miriam" would have said...

M

 

[OliverK]

Let me say this: It is almost heartbreaking to see so much effort (if not money which I kind of doubt) put into El Cid save for the transfer of the movie itself. The same package with a superior transfer could have been the DVD/Blu-Ray of the year.

Of the remaining three titles Fall is the most prestiguous and visually stunning and I hope they get it right, no matter who pays for that.
I think most of us agree that a great opportunity has been missed with El Cid and I hope that Weinstein and the owners will work something out for the remaining movies.

As RAH has pointed out repeatedly, these movies have some potential to be really high profile releases for Weinstein, but at the moment there is a lot of bad publicity for the so-so half-hearted transfer released already and this will not really help the image of Weinstein and the Miriam collection.

 

[Robert Harris]

I would advise all to keep in mind that much like Criterion and the 2:1 Last Emperor, The Weinstein Company may not have a choice as to what elements are offered.

I have no direct information.

RAH

 

[Simon Howson]

Good point.

I hope they made the decision about whether or not to license the films AFTER they were shown available elements (or rather after the person they pay to inspect elements gave them his/her evaluation).

 

[OliverK]

As of last year I was in contact with the company that owns part of the movies and also represents the other owners.

I was getting the impression that Weinstein never asked for large fomat elements and was only sorting out wether to use Digibeta masters or 35mm low contrast prints to source the DVD's.

Given these informations I was pleasantly surprised they did an HD transfer. Of course I am not so happy anymore after having sampled the El Cid DVD on a big screen, they could have gotten that result or slightly better with existing masters.

 

[Douglas R]

There's a lot of mention in this thread about the owners of the Bronston films but who exactly IS that? Do P.C. Films, based in New York and set up by Bronston's creditors, still own the films?

 

[john a hunter]

The cost of TFOTRE is usually given as $19 mill. There are numerous mistakes and omissions in that poorly researched book.Apparently another Bronson bio is on the way-hopefully it will be better.
The actual cost of Cleopatra was about $26 mill but is usually given at about $38 mill as Fox added all its losses on other projects. With Ben Hur at about $15 mill, $19 for Empire seems about right.

 

[OliverK]

The movie rights are held by multiple parties, the only one I know by name would be Hollywood Classics. They also handle the distribution of the movies and do have access to the OCN's afaik.

 

[OliverK]

I got a mail from Neal Rosendorf who is one of the authors and this book is in the works now for about a dozen years and they still dig up new stuff like for example the book-keeping records of all the Bronston epics - should be interesting. The only downside is that it has been postponed again and is now scheduled to be published late in 2009 - truly an epic endeavour

By the way: You can see both authors in the extras of El Cid. There are three biographers in there and one is Mr. Martin who wrote the book that is currently available, the other two are Mr. Rosendorf and his colleague, the name escapes me at the moment.

 

[john a hunter]

One copy already sold!

 

[oscar_merkx]

make that 2

 

[haroldS]

After all the comments about "Fall..." and the opinions about the transfer of "El Cid", would it "ok" to pre-order "Fall..." or should you wait until it is released and see what the transfer looks like?