Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Licensees

DVD releases of older TV shows and movies are slowly winding down; with DVDs not selling as much as they used to, there are a lot of shows and movies that aren't going to get out of the vaults. One hopes that some studios will take the obvious step of licensing out the titles they don't want to release. That's what Universal seems to be doing. Criterion will be releasing Ernst Lubitsch's early '30s musicals with Maurice Chevalier -- made for Paramount but owned by Universal -- in its low-budget Eclipse line. And Universal has slowly started letting Hart Sharp Video have some old TV titles for its "TV Guide Presents" line, first Banacek and now, glory of glories, the syndicated seasons of Charles in Charge. I hope this becomes a trend; we're not going to see big-studio releases of obscure old movies and cheesy '80s TV shows, so why not let small companies have them?

2 comments:

Thad said...

I hope it doesn't become a trend if something like Charles in Charge is allowed release.

Anonymous said...

The release of the Lubitsch films is fantastic news.