How bout a Blu for The Black Hole (1979) (1 Viewer)

[David Norman]

Depends on if you've spoken to the people that have had their DMR and DMC accounts stripped, closed, and permanently banned from signing up in the future for getting caught doing it.

 

[MatthewA]

How is that supposed to reduce the demand for second- and third-party sales? If you can no longer join the club, of course you're going to buy them used if you have no other choice.

 

[David Norman]

How is that supposed to reduce the demand for second- and third-party sales? If you can no longer join the club, of course you're going to buy them used if you have no other choice.

It won;t decrease the 3rd party market, but it does show that DMC does actually care about people using their site to stock up (contrary to the previous post). I don't think they can legally stop people or Ebay from selling titles, but they can punish those they find who are are buying and re/selling them.

Some people who want to be in DMC will at least think twice about it once several people report being banned for suspected reselling

 

[MatthewA]

And that's why the club model is inherently flawed. I don't buy the argument that 20000 Leagues Under the Sea will move fewer units than Mr. Wrong. I don't even buy it regarding The Black Hole considering how much interest there was in the soundtrack alone on another message board.

Part of me wishes they'd let Shout! have a crack at some of the live-action titles, similar to the Kino Lorber deal for Touchstone/Hollywood B- and C-movies, but another part of me is afraid of the strings Disney would put on such an arrangement. They are already into 4K UHD discs and for animated canon titles, so they're not done with physical media altogether.

 

[David Norman]

Units vs profit though.
Flawed from a consumer standpoint, likely not from a corporate one.

I strongly suspect they'd have to sell multiple times the number of units on a wide release to make close to the same amt as they do on a Club release - a couple hundred scalped titles on Ebay due to perceived scarcity isn't going to move the needle much. Since Disney seems to have pretty smart accountants, I'm guessing there is a reason

 

[MatthewA]

Units vs profit though.
Flawed from a consumer standpoint, likely not from a corporate one.

The consumer is the one who is actually going to buy the disc and sit down and watch it.

a couple hundred scalped titles on Ebay due to perceived scarcity isn't going to move the needle much.

It's still lost income that went to someone else. Now, if each disc is $20, then that's just $4000 made by second- and third-parties if one title, let's say The Black Hole just for relevancy and argument's sake, sells only 200 used/unwanted copies on eBay. A tiny drop in the bucket, but even a tiny drop can produce a long-ranging ripple. Multply that by ever DMC DVD and Blu-ray to date, and the bucket is the same size, but the drop gets bigger and bigger.

What their accountants do not have a mathematical equation for is the actual effects of bad decision on human beings. I know it's the wrong studio, but people aren't Vulcans. They don't always do things in a tightly logical fashion. Not even Disney executives. Even under these limitations, it costs money to make a disc the wrong way and then go back and fix it the right way. But the benefit to the studio of eating the costs of a fixed disc is that it makes people more likely to want to come back and buy more movies. That's good customer service. If they released a disc that left the overture inaccessible by the means by which most people actually watch movies on disc, and they had said "take it or leave it," they would likely have fewer sales in the future. That's bad customer service.

 

[David Norman]

T
It's still lost income that went to someone else. Now, if each disc is $20, then that's just $4000 made by second- and third-parties if one title, l.

I just don't think Disney is leaving that many sales on the plate and almost certainly is making more money via a DMC route than a normal retail for these type catalog items

The scalper buys 3-10 from Disney and resells them. If it's released wide, the scalper buys none and the scalp-ees buys the same number likely at a much lower price via a retail store and very likely a lower price than a unit via DMC. Disney end up sharing a cut of the lower Retail unit price (compared with a DMC Sale) with Best Buy/Amazon/WM, spends more in extra overhead/distribution and gets a relatively small bump in net unit sales (esp international customers who likely make up a decent pool of those scalped copies). The collectors are already buying, the casual fan doesn't seem to care,

 

[MatthewA]

I just don't think Disney is leaving that many sales on the plate and almost certainly is making more money via a DMC route than a normal retail for these type catalog items

Yet Disney actually believes that an unmitigated bomb like Mr. Wrong will sell more copies in stores that way, so they'll let a licensor release it? This movie looks like Citizen freaking Kane by comparison.

 

[Sam Favate]

I submitted a request for the corrected disc through the Club's email a few days ago. Yesterday I received a confirmation for the new disc (not a shipping confirmation), along with a form letter that said "We're sorry your disc wasn't satisfactory," etc.

 

[Tino]

Terrific article on making The Black Hole

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...why-disneys-black-hole-lost-star-wars-1262526

 

[Edwin-S]

That title explains why the thing ended up with that quasi-religious nonsense of an ending. They had no clue how to end it so they fell back on nonsense. It was like a poorer version of "The Night on Bald Mountain" sequence from "Fantasia".

I don't quite get why the film is so fondly remembered. The only really good thing in it was the design of the Cygnus and the FX work.

 

[Ross Gowland]

As a nine year old it just captured my imagination. I loved the visuals, I loved the robots; the bleak tone, enhanced by the score, fascinated me and the ending just blew my mind.

Same with The Watcher in the Woods a year or so later. An ambiguous ending just fired my child mind.

And these days, 2001: A Space Odyssey is my favourite film, so I guess little has changed.

(As an aside, it always surprises me that it was seen as Disney’s answer to Star Wars. Cute robots aside, it seems so wildly different. Brooding and dark while SW was bright and thrilling.)

 

[Tino]

That title explains why the thing ended up with that quasi-religious nonsense of an ending. They had no clue how to end it so they fell back on nonsense. It was like a poorer version of "The Night on Bald Mountain" sequence from "Fantasia".

I don't quite get why the film is so fondly remembered. The only really good thing in it was the design of the Cygnus and the FX work.

Did you read the article Edwin? They explain the whole “religious nonsense” aspect of the film.

 

[Matt Hough]

Terrific article on making The Black Hole

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...why-disneys-black-hole-lost-star-wars-1262526

I read it a day or two ago and really enjoyed the comments of some of the participants. I'm glad you've provided a link so others who are fans of the movie or just curious about it can read for themselves about the filming experience.

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

Terrific article on making The Black Hole

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...why-disneys-black-hole-lost-star-wars-1262526

Thanks for sharing that. What a terrific read!!!

 

[skylark68]

Great article, thanks for sharing. This has always been one of my favorite films that take place in deep space. I had the storybook record/soundtrack. The Cygnus is a work of art, and the star fields in the background show an almost vivid lusciousness. The black hole itself is a marvel, the menacing swirling in the background in amazing, especially during the dinner scene. I do like the postcript in the article to Mr. Forster. What a great actor that I rediscovered in Jackie Brown when that came out. He's definitely missed.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

 

[Angelo Colombus]

I hope one day the Blu-ray won't be a Disney Movie Club Exclusive but I guess you can buy it on Amazon or Ebay. It's too bad about the lack of extras and the reviews about the imperfect print used for the disc.

 

[Edwin-S]

Did you read the article Edwin? They explain the whole “religious nonsense” aspect of the film.

The only explanation I see was that they were going to make it an even more religious ending than it got, due to WDC getting cold feet. The issue is the ending was terrible to begin with and what they originally planned was even worse. Nothing could be worse than spending 20,000,000+ making a movie without having a clue on how it would end.

The article says the ending was like something out of Fantasia. Like something? It was out of Fantasia. It was the "Night on Bald Mountain/Av Marie" sequence, except it was an amateurish, terrible recreation.

The show was supposed to be Science Fiction, but they couldn't think up anything even quasi-scientific to end it? They went 180 and brought in a religious viewpoint to end it. Blarg.

The end was bad when I saw it in its theatrical run and it is still bad after watching it on Disney+.

I thought it was funny when Forster said it wasn't "Bambi". I just had to laugh at that. "Bambi" was a hundred times better than TBH and more realistic to boot. As for being "dark", I guess there is nothing dark about your mother being murdered and suddenly finding yourself alone in a hostile environment or having to run for your life while your home burns down around you.

TBH had exactly the same problem that "The Black Cauldron" had. The suits at Disney couldn't make up their minds who the films were to be aimed at, so they ended up being like blunderbusses that missed every target.

I will say that TBH being Disney's answer to STAR WARS is way off the mark It is a completely different animal than SW. The only similarities is that it is set in Space and has robots.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I hope one day the Blu-ray won't be a Disney Movie Club Exclusive but I guess you can buy it on Amazon or Ebay. It's too bad about the lack of extras and the reviews about the imperfect print used for the disc.

The print actually isn’t imperfect, but some reviewers just don’t understand what they’re looking at. This is a film that had tons of opticals, which result in generational loss and a significant reduction in detail. It’s simply how the film was created and how it’s always looked. But because theatrical release prints in 1979 had far less resolution than a Blu-ray does today, the current disc reveals the limitations of the sourced material that were hidden in 35mm projection. But there’s nothing wrong with the disc or the element transferred. It’s simply how the movie looks.