The Warner Archive
On Sunday, Warner Brothers released 5,000 films on DVD.
Well, sort of.
Warner Brothers set up shop way back in 1918. It’s been producing films, and buying them from other people, for over 80 years. And it has a catalog of over 6,000 titles.
But they’ve only released 1,200 of those titles on DVD.
But the new Warner Archive changes all that. It’s the first of its kind: a manufacture-on-demand DVD service, and will–eventually–leverage a much greater proportion of the Warner library, compared to today.
For $20, the price of a normal DVD, the Warner Archive will print up a disk–complete with cover art, labels, everything you’d expect from a retail DVD. It’s not a bad deal.
The site launched with 150 titles, none of which have appeared on DVD before. That doesn’t sound like all that many–but it increases the total number of DVDs available from Warner Bros. by more than 10%, just like that. And they’ll add twenty new titles every month. Fans can vote on the pics they want to come out next.
Sure, you haven’t actually heard of any of these films. Neither have I. But that’s simply because they haven’t been available until now. A lot of these look like the A-list films of yesteryear. Stars like Clark Gable abound. No Douglas Fairbanks Sr/Jr yet, but I’ll be keeping my eye out.
The film industry has its long tail, and now, because of the web, studios can take advantage of their vast libraries, filled with history, and make effectively lost films available to a new generation.
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