"It might face competition for Fox’s entertainment assets from Comcast, the US cable group, and Verizon, the telecoms group, both of which have expressed an interest." Oh God no! Comcast? It's bad enough they own Universal and NBC. Verizon? Do we really want all the studios to be owned by phone companies and ISP? Amything else I say will be either off topic or heavily political, so instead I'm just going to say if those are our three choices for who will buy Fox then.... COME ON, DISNEY, YOU CAN DO IT!
I don't buy the loyalty argument. They were more than eager to politely Lucas to go eff himself when it came to having even a consultant's role on the new sequels...
Nothing is restored, and there's still a lot of pieces and scraps that would have to be re-assembled and re-created. The YCM separations are a generation down from the OCN, so you'd always be better off scanning from the OCN (except in rare cases where the OCN was torn or badly damaged, which did happen on the first Star Wars). There weren't that many dye-transfer prints made, and even so, they don't have nearly the detail or quality as the original negative. This is one of those things where if they could devote 6-7 months and a couple of million bucks to it, they could restore the 1977 theatrical film. But I would bet any restoration efforts would be put on hold until the Disney/Fox merger/buyout deal happens or is killed. If Disney buys Fox, then it becomes a moot point: a boxed theatrical Blu-ray set (and even a theatrical reissue) could come out within a year or less. What Exactly Would Happen if Disney Buys Fox?
Naaaa, nobody gives a crap and everybody has seen it 9000 times on home video. I think it could do OK (but not blockbuster numbers) in a limited run in maybe 10 cities for a week. The novelty on this kind of thing wears off real quick. Again, I'm 100% for the reissue of all the movies in their original theatrical form and I'm positive the technology and materials exist to do it. This is more an economic/philosophical dilemma, not a technical one. Disney has to just want to do it in order to make it happen. If Disney spends $60 billion buying Fox, that's drastically alters the landscape of Hollywood, and everything changes. (Note that Disney is worth somewhere north of $160B right now. Apple is worth north of $800 billion, so they could buy every Hollywood studio & American TV network and have change left over.)
Keep in mind, Disney are the kings of marketing. If they announce this is an exclusive, short run and will not be coming to home video, they could get butts into the theaters. I think it could do $100 million, easy.
But there's no way that they would announce it as not coming to home video. Why leave all that home video/VOD money on the table? They would never do that. This is Disney we're talking about- the kings of "released from the vault" / "returning to the vault soon!".
There is also their streaming platform to think about. All of their Star Wars movies will be streamed exclusively on that platform. If they were to gain the distribution rights to all six Lucas-era films, and were to restore the theatrical versions of the original trilogy, they would surely want those newly restored gems on their streaming service along with their new live-action Star Wars series. Their new streaming service could be all things Marvel and Star Wars.
I think the whole point of buying Fox is to have exclusivity on the entire Fox / Disney / Marvel / Lucasfilm / Pixar library only on the Disney streaming service. That will take a huge bite out of Netflix, for sure.
There's no doubt that Disney Streaming will become a juggernaut, but I'm not so sure that it will take a huge bite out of Netflix. I think the two can coexist (along with a few other streamers) as they provide different type of content. There's not much of Disney owned stuff that's attractive to me personally (though I know kids will be glued to the service). I much prefer the diverse, original content that Netflix produces (alomg with Amazon & HBO).
Yeah, but keep in mind, every film you drop into theaters occupies a theater your competitors can't make money off of. So there would be a huge incentive for Disney to drop the original Star Wars trilogy into theaters with no immediate home video or streaming release on the calendar. This is one of the few properties with fans fanatical enough to make that the most commercially-viable option.
There's more money to be made off home video / VOD sales than a theatrical run, but they wouldn't do one over the other- they'll do both and rake in as much cash as possible.
This is still artistically/creatively a horrible idea for artists and consumers. Horrible. The idea that this contributes to a Disney-run competitor to Netflix as if anything regarding this creates *more* competition is silly. It's just more consolidation. I guess I'm just glad stuff like "Logan" got made before Disney got their hands on the studio. Stuff like that would NEVER have been made under Disney.
Doubt that. Theatrical revenues are more than triple those of home video. From the LA Times last year: Global box-office revenue leveled off at $38.6 billion last year, up just 1% from 2015. Annual home entertainment sales have fallen 50% to $12 billion in the last decade, gutting one of the studios’ key profit centers. Studios want to get you rental movies much quicker — for a price Streaming isn't making the studios tons of money, which is one of the reasons why I think they're trying to cut their ties to Netflix, Amazon and Apple and build out their own streaming services, where they don't have to share revenue with anybody, can set and change the terms at will, control all of the promotion and build their own databases of users' likes and dislikes to use in their marketing. Hence things like CBS All Access.
Disney and Netflix can co-exist. Disney will market the family friendly angle, and Netflix will have all of it's original content which is...not so family friendly. I think it's a sure bet that Disney will charge more for it's service.
They may "co-exist" as content creators, but the days of Netflix offering content from the studios themselves are likely coming to an end.
Btw, for a re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy they could bring it on selected cinemas for limited time, as some producers do that with concert films.
News is now saying they're seriously close to closing a deal: Disney and Fox are closing in on deal, could be announced next week: Sources
I've read that, but it hasn't changed my mind that Disney will be a 'Netflix killer'. In fact, in the article VideoNuze analyst Will Richmond says: "But it won’t be a credible Netflix killer: With Netflix so well established already, I see the new Disney service as an augment, with few people dropping Netflix to add Disney’s SVOD.”, which exactly aligns with what I said before.