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Monday
23Mar2009

Warner Bros. Opens Archives of Never-Released DVDs

DateMonday, March 23, 2009 at 7:26AM
A round of applause for Warner Bros., the first studio I know of to give movie fans a chance to see a lot of buried titles in its catalog on DVD. What's more, Warner is avoiding overhead by only issuing specially made DVDs to fit individual orders. That means no 55-year-old movies collecting dust on retailers shelves, which in the past was legitimately prohibiting the company from opening the vaults that much further.

What this really means is that you can get your hands on seldom seen Warner Bros. movie in about a week's time. The studio will charge you $20 and I'm sure the quality of the print burned to your DVD will be a crap shoot, but for the first time, titles that have never been released can be part of your private collection.

Now, just how many movies does Warner Bros. have locked away that you can't buy? About five times as many as you can pick up through traditional means. The studio has over 6,800 titles in its warehouse, and around 1,200 are currently available commercially.

Not everything is available yet, and it won't be for a while. Today, 150 films were made available for the first time at Warner Archive, and the studio plans to release about 20 new titles a month. "Our goal is to eventually open up our entire vault," says the studio's George Feltenstein says.

"We've been working on this for three years. I've always said it would be great if people could buy anything in our library, and now the time has come, because the technology finally exists."

Indeed it does; in addition to ordering a shrinkwrapped DVD for 20 bones, viewers can download the movies for $15.

I am madly in love with this idea, and I can't wait for the other studios to follow suit. The best news here is that you can already envision one of the other major Hollywood studios trying to top it when they introduce their line the same way, either with lower prices or more titles available immediately.

In less than 30 seconds, I found both a Doc Savage movie and Yes, Giorgio with Luciano Pavarotti. I don't think I'd watch either one of them, but I think that displays the breadth of what's available. However, I would actually like to see the Paul Simon movie, One Trick Pony, and the 1965 sci-fi thrilla, Brainstorm, directed by the Fatman himself, William Conrad. Turns out he actually directed TV shows and movies for about 25 years. Who knew?

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment2 Comments |

Reader Comments (2)

wow, and the film studios wonder why people pirate stuff.

Monday, March 23, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterKaveh

At a casual glance, I find Beast Of The City, which is a truly amazing movie, Coppola's pre-Godfather The Rain People, Westbound, the one Boetticher/Scott Ranown western that isn't on the new box set besides Seven Men From Now, which was given the royal treatment a couple of years ago, Heart Beat, which isn't all that good, but it is a Kerouac/Cassady picture that so far as I know has not been available, King Of The Roaring Twenties - The Arnold Rothstein story--awful picture but cool anyway--David Janssen as Arnold Rothstein!!, They Only Kill Their Masters---

Friday, March 27, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterhcb

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