Question about distribution (1 Viewer)

[felipenor]

There's something I quite don't get:
I had heard Warner bought all MGM library up to 1980, but The best years of our lives is an MGM movie and doesn't belong to Warner. Warner also owns Top Hat (which is an RKO picture), did they buy the whole RKO library? Some movies like Royal wedding and Till the clouds roll by have slipped into public domain. Did I get it right? How the heck can a movie simply slip into public domain??? Then I see Warner releasing an Oliver Stone collection that contains movies like Platoon (MGM) and Wall Street (Fox). It sounds kinda crazy to me...

 

[John Whittle]

Welcome to the wonderful world of movie company swapping.

As for Warners and MGM it started something like this:

Warner Bros. was on hard times and sold it's pre-48 feature and short library. It was purchased by a company called Associated Artists Productions (AAP) which I think was Canadian. AAP later was merged/bought by United Artsits and became UAA. Thru several other moves UA and MGM merge, then Ted Turner buys MGM and keeps the librarys of MGM, UA and now pre-48 Warner Bros but sells the studio back to Kirk Kerorian. Then Time buys Turner and CNN, then Time and Warner Bros merge and low and behold, all the pre-48 Warner Bros. pictures are now BACK with Warner Bros.

Independant pictures have lives of their own and have to be tracked by themselves which is why High and the Mighty (Warner Bros release) is now comming to DVD from Paramount.

BTW, the pre-48 Paramount library was sold to Universal.

You really need a chart and a lawyer to follow the ownership. In fact when you make a movie you have to have proof of "chain of title" to get insurance since story and characters (underlying rights) can trace back to some remarkable sources.

["Best Years of our LIves" was a Goldwyn picture not an MGM movie]

John