Who currently owns ONE MILLION B.C. (1940)? (1 Viewer)

[Dick]

I suspect that Hal Roach's estate does. Universal had the license for the(terrible, muddy, blurry) VHS release, but it's been long out of print. I have heard tell there is a really nice t.v, print being shown in some venues taken from an excellent 35mm source (negative?) Anyway, I wish someone would release this. It's sort of silly, but has some great moments. And it was one of the earliest "talkie" dino flicks.

 

[Thomas T]

Image Entertainment has been releasing most of the titles controlled by the Hal Roach estate. I suspect if One Million B.C. sees the light of day on DVD, it will most likely be through an Image release. They released this film on laser disc, too.

 

[Opi]

In Germany this title was released through Fox as "Eine Million Jahre vor unserer Zeit".
It's 16:9 enhanced (picture is still not very good), has an English Stereo audio track and English subs - just in case you wanna by it
It's a PAL disk of course

EAN 010232-021328

Greetings
Opi

 

[John Hodson]

Opi, aren't you referring to the Rachel Welch version?

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So many films, so little time...

 

[Opi]

Oops, yeah ... I'm sorry
I should open my eyes before I start writing nonsense

 

[Mark Oates]

According to the Laurel and Hardy "Official" Website (which hasn't been updated in two years), "One Million BC", along with the Topper films and of course all the surviving L&H films are being restored by KirschGroup as copyright holders for the Eastern Hemisphere. It seems they've rescued the nitrate negatives from the Library of Congress, where they were being allowed to disintegrate, and they're currently striking safety negatives. The upshot of this is that RHI Entertainment (as Western Hemisphere copyright holders) are able to take their own set of these negatives for future use. We're already seeing the benefit of this deal in Europe with the DVD release on Universal's VVL label of Laurel and Hardy's entire output between 1927 and 1940. Under the same deal, I believe the US has seen the release of the Little Rascals shorts some time ago.

With any luck there might be a Universal release of One Million BC on the cards somewhere.