What Happened TO Warners May/June John Wayne / Clint Eastwood Movies? (1 Viewer)

[MCCLOUD]

It seems like for many years WARNERS would release John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies in May/June. What happened this year?

Thanks

Robert

 

[Dick]

They're not doing it this year.

Sorry if that sounds curt, but none of us here (to my knowledge) works at Warner Bros., and their reps do not engage in our threads, so answers can only be speculative,

I wish I could be more optimistic. Maybe look for them to be dribbled out through the Archives. I would love to see Eastwood's BRONCO BILLY & WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART. Not sure why it's taken so long for remainder of the Eastwood library, probably among Warner's biggest breadwinners, to make it to Blu-ray.

As for the John Wayne titles under the WB umbrella, I have even less to offer.

 

[J. Casey]

I was wishing as well, but when they (WAC/WB) listed the June titles I was officially disappointed. Of course, last year they did a double whammy with titles from both WB and WAC!

 

[Alan Tully]

The only John Wayne I'm waiting for from Warner is, The Three Godfathers (1947), it's on Amazon Video HD, but I don't know if it's a proper restoration or not. It could look quite spectacular if done right (& if the elements are okay).

 

[Robert Crawford]

The only John Wayne I'm waiting for from Warner is, The Three Godfathers (1947), it's on Amazon Video HD, but I don't know if it's a proper restoration or not. It could look quite spectacular if done right (& if the elements are okay).

The actual name of that film is 3 Godfathers and it's a yearly Christmas Eve viewing for me.

 

[BRAD1963]

Blood Alley and The Sea Chase, Wayne films not yet on Blu-ray from WB.

 

[skylark68]

Who owns the rights to Legend of the Lost with Wayne/Loren? I think MGM distributed it back in the day.

 

[J. Casey]

I think it's still with MGM/UA (United Artists). I have the German blu from Koch and it's pretty serviceable, also region free; MGM/UA is listed as the licensor on it. Hope we'll get a Region A release soon from a more recent master.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It seems like for many years WARNERS would release John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies in May/June. What happened this year?

To echo what others are saying, Warner (and other studios) are placing less and less emphasis on physical media with each passing moment. Sales are down, and studios at this point would prefer us to rent or purchase their titles digitally. Home video departments are also shrinking with layoffs and cutbacks, so there are less people around running the shop. So the answer is probably a combination of the studio having less interest in putting out the titles along with perhaps the people who had been in charge of putting them out each May/June no longer being there or no longer having the ability to schedule such releases.

 

[MCCLOUD]

Blood Alley and The Sea Chase, Wayne films not yet on Blu-ray from WB.

Big Jim MCLain, Trouble Along The Way, Tall In The Saddle, and Back To Bataan are the ones left that I want the most. Bronco Billy is what I want that Eastwood starred in.

Robert

 

[Nick*Z]

This year WAC's had the Peckinpah love-in with Ride the High Country and now The Ballad of Cable Hogue.

RE: why it's taking so long to get vintage catalog to Blu...even such high profile stars as Wayne and Eastwood...let's not even go there. I have to say, I've been rather disappointed with quite a few of the choices that have come down the pike from WAC this year: From Hell It Came, The Valley of the Gwangi and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth among them.

Lest we forget that for each 'B' and 'C' grade catalog release we are setting aside the opportunity to get a quality release of some bona fide classic like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or Oscar winning Best Picture like The Great Ziegfeld and Around the World in 80 Days. These titles arguably need more care to be curated, restored and remastered for a hi-def release. But by 2017 we ought to have seen at least some of them in the pike.

Instead, WAC's roster of catalog has been - at best - a real 'mixed bag'. Sure, it's fun to have campy fluff in hi-def. But not at the expense of the higher profile stuff. When I think that a truly big star like Clark Gable is barely represented at all in hi-def and absolutely non-existent from his golden period at MGM (no Red Dust, China Seas, San Francisco, Idiot's Delight, etc. et al) it makes me ill. Ditto for stars like Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Esther Williams, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Mario Lanza, Lana Turner, Norma Shearer, and the uber-versatile legends like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. A few of these have at least sporadically surfaced in hi-def.

But it took us decades to get, say, Mildred Pierce on Blu and when it finally arrived it came from Criterion - not Warner Home Video or even WAC. Joan Crawford's Oscar-winning performance...and it didn't come from the studio that gave her the opportunity to shine in the first place?!?!? We live in a crazy world!!!

AsideAbsolutely NO complaints about the Criterion release - it's superb). Personally, I would have Criterion do more with their WB alliance and go after some of the bigger catalog I've listed herein.

But what? No love for National Velvet, High Society, That Midnight Kiss, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Shop Around the Corner, When Ladies Meet, Captain Blood, All This and Heaven Too, Adam's Rib, Million Dollar Mermaid, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Marie Antoinette, The Thin Man, Boy's Town, Captains Courageous, etc. et al.?

No use saying WAC hasn't done an admirable job here, because they have. Their releases are given the quality and care they deserve. I just wish someone would start steering the ship to port for some of these legendary releases and place the onus and focus on the stuff that really ought to have had it all along. I don't mind the camp. But too much of it without at least one or two of the aforementioned releases per year is really unacceptable to many - if not all. Personally, I'm not shopping WAC for pretty much the rest of the summer - none of their releases all that appealing.

Some will trickle into my library eventually, but they are not 'jump out of my seat'/must haves at a glance. That's a pity. I love their work. I just don't like the titles on their roster of late. Oh well, you can't please everybody all of the time. I just wish they would please me with a few really certified 'classic' releases this year. I have hope for the Fall, when the push is on for Christmas goodies. For now, I'll simply take off to the beach and enjoy the weather, forgetting about movies in general, and these pending WAC releases in particular.

 

[Nick Eden]

What a great post from Nick Z.
I suspect that sums it up for a lot of people on here.
In reply to Josh's post above, I would share a couple of thoughts. I have always been an avid collector of material (TV or film) on physical media. This push to owning in the cloud leaves me cold. I have curated a very large collection both from the UK and the USA on both DVDs and BluRays.
Within the past few weeks, here in the UK, a cloud based streaming venture from the BBC, called BBC Store, which began 2 years ago, has announced it is to close by year end. No new orders are being taken and all monies will be refunded when the plug is pulled and those programmes bought disappear again into the archives. Without stating the bleeding obvious, that couldn't happen with physical media.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Good point regarding Cloud-based verses Physical Media.
This is why I use VUDU basically for renting.
With cloud-based "ownership" you have to worry about:
* Going over a data cap while viewing a movie. This will become more and more prevalent as cable company ISPs start imposing lower and lower data caps to offset business lost via cord cutters.
* The scenario provided above: The service you "purchased" all those movies from goes out of business. If you look at the fine print on those transactions with VUDU it will become evident that you're really just paying a one-time lease fee which is good for as long as the service is available and/or subsidiary contracts remain in force with the providers. You actually own nothing!

(As an aside, I'm enjoying having the Harryhausen "Gwangi" movie on Blu ...)

 

[Randy Korstick]

Good post by Nick but the obvious reason for B and C catalog titles being released by WA on blu is they sell great and will sell much better than titles like The Great Ziegfield, Red Dust, Idiot's Delight, That Midnight Kiss, etc. Those films are certainly "more worthy" by virtue of their quality and status but that doesn't equal sales. Just take a look at catalog titles requests on different forums and sales numbers from different sites. Horror and Sci-Fi titles from the 50's through the 80's are by far the biggest catalog sellers on blu ray. Take a look at the fastest selling titles from Twilight Time. They just have a bigger collectors market. I actually think WA is doing a great mix of titles to try and please everyone. I think the way we should look at this is for every B and C film that WA makes a good profit on that frees up more income for restoring great classics for future release.

 

[OliverK]

Good post by Nick but the obvious reason for B and C catalog titles being released by WA on blu is they sell great and will sell much better than titles like The Great Ziegfield, Red Dust, Idiot's Delight, That Midnight Kiss, etc. Those films are certainly "more worthy" by virtue of their quality and status but that doesn't equal sales. Just take a look at catalog titles requests on different forums and sales numbers from different sites. Horror and Sci-Fi titles from the 50's through the 80's are by far the biggest catalog sellers on blu ray. Take a look at the fastest selling titles from Twilight Time. They just have a bigger collectors market. I actually think WA is doing a great mix of titles to try and please everyone. I think the way we should look at this is for every B and C film that WA makes a good profit on that frees up more income for restoring great classics for future release.

Horror and SciFi titles sell like crazy it seems and often these titles are also rather easy to prepare.

Compare that with some historical epics (favorites of mine), musicals and large format productions in general that often garner less interest while being more expensive to prepare, especially by Warners current standards.

I happen to think that when it comes to the historical epics Warner is not trying to please too hard by the way, with musicals they are doing better.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

With Warner, unfortunately, we always run into their internal policy not to release anything on Blu-ray that isn't 100% pristine and perfect. Every other label (with the possible exception of Sony) will put out something that's less than astonishingly perfect. For some studios, like MGM, they rarely ever come close to that level of perfection on even one release, but will outsource "perfectly decent" copies of titles to pretty much any distributor that wants to take a crack at it. Studios like Fox and Universal will do incredibly high quality restorations of certain titles, but for titles where they know there isn't a high demand and where it wouldn't make sense to fund an expensive restoration, they'll at least let their best existing version be released. Warner doesn't do that, and in general they refuse to license to anyone else (while I'm happy Criterion has released a couple WB-owned titles, it hasn't been enough for me to get excited about floodgates opening), so we're stuck.

If we're to accept the numbers of someone like RAH at face value (and I see no reason not to), films like Seven Bridges For Seven Brothers or Around The World In 80 Days would take hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, to restore. Meanwhile, the so-called B- and C- grade titles that have come out from Warner Archive this year (and given that we've gotten stuff like Seven Days In May, it's hard for me to agree with that assessment) aren't titles that were in need of restoration. They merely needed to have new elements struck from the negative that could be used for a digital scan. RAH estimated the cost of a new print and a new scan to be in the single-digit thousands. Clearly, Warner Archive is not given the free reign or the budget to do whatever they want. So with that said, I'd rather they release four movies a month that can be put out in high quality versions at low cost to them than to release one major restoration every other year. The truth is, at this point in time, the home video revenue is not going to justify or recoup the investment for a $500,000 restoration. There has to be another incentive to do it besides video profit. So as long as video profit isn't going to be paying for one of those releases, I'm fine with Warner Archive not blowing two years of budget to release one title.

What I would like to see changed would be an increased willingness to license out titles, and a less critical eye towards available masters in certain circumstances. For films that require expensive restorations that can never hope to recoup their expenses and aren't popular or prestigious enough to raise the money or interest elsewhere, I'd rather they put out something that's imperfect than nothing at all.

In reply to Josh's post above, I would share a couple of thoughts. I have always been an avid collector of material (TV or film) on physical media. This push to owning in the cloud leaves me cold. I have curated a very large collection both from the UK and the USA on both DVDs and BluRays.
Within the past few weeks, here in the UK, a cloud based streaming venture from the BBC, called BBC Store, which began 2 years ago, has announced it is to close by year end. No new orders are being taken and all monies will be refunded when the plug is pulled and those programmes bought disappear again into the archives. Without stating the bleeding obvious, that couldn't happen with physical media.

For sure. Although, just to play devil's advocate to that, how many of us are using Laserdisc players today? There could come a point in time where TV manufacturers switch to a video format that's not easily compatible with the current BD spec, or there could come a point in time where working players are no longer being produced and the existing ones start to wear out. The glue that holds my discs together seem pretty good - I've got DVDs that are 20 years old and BDs more than 10 years old and they all seem to work pretty well. But who knows, maybe in another 10 or 20 years the glue will start failing or the player will start dying or the format might not be compatible with whatever new televisions they come up with. I love my disc collection and will hang on to it as long as possible. But I don't think it's infallible either.

That does suck with the BBC Store shutting down. But I think that also speaks to why a system like Ultraviolet - in theory at least - is the way to go. When Ultraviolet, you own the movie and can access it in multiple storefronts. So if or when one of the stores goes out of business, you still have your titles. Best Buy's CinemaNow doesn't exist anymore, but anyone who bought titles on there can now watch them on Vudu, etc. I prefer to use streaming for renting rather than purchasing, but if it's a situation where buying is the only option, I prefer to do business with UV-affiliated merchants.

 

[atfree]

I thought for sure we'd get The Shootist from Warners this Fathers Day. First year they've missed a Duke release in May or June in a few years. Disappointed.....

 

[ahollis]

I thought for sure we'd get The Shootist from Warners this Fathers Day. First year they've missed a Duke release in May or June in a few years. Disappointed.....

It would be released by Paramount if and when it is released on Blu. The Warner/Paramount agreement ended last year.

 

[CinemaCynic]

To say nothing of films like 'Up The Down Staircase' or the long awaited 'Last Summer.' I love WA and buy practically everything they've got to sell, SD and Blu Ray, but this is the first year I've felt like my patience is being a bit tested, especially with a film like 'Gwangi.' They have HUNDREDS of titles that ought to have preceeded that one in priority.

And a minor comment on a tangential topic here, the BBC Store. That endeavour ought to be carefully studied by any major developer of cloud/streaming distribution as a monument to sheer incompetence. This isn't the thread for a detailed summary but the myriad of terrible technical and market choices made by that team can only be described as 'consumer abuse.' It also stands as a warning to the serious collectors among us, buy and support optical media as long as you can!

 

[ahollis]

Actually "Gwangi" was one of their most requested titles due to Ray Harryhausen participation.