Warner owns all pre-1986 MGM titles and cartoons

what effect does this have on Blu-Ray?

Umm, what? No they don't. Cartoon, dunno. Movies. Nope.

Umm, what? No they don't. Cartoon, dunno. Movies. Nope.

I believe here are the facts, correct me if you have any info i do not know about:

Many have asked the question of just how MGM would "give up" control of all their pre-1986 catalog, which contains such lucrative and well-regarded properties as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Poltergeist, amongst others. The fact of the matter is that the story is a bit more complicated, in that MGM in actuality has not owned these titles for some time already.

Back in 1986, Ted Turner tried to buy Time Warner (!), but failed due to lack of funds, and ended up with only Warner's pre-1948 and MGM's pre-1968 titles. In a subsequent and quite convoluted chain of events , Warner ended up buying Ted Turner's company, TNT. Good ol' Ted also sold home video distribution rights to these titles to MGM. So, when the Pathe deal rolled around in 1990, Warner ended up distributing pre-1948 Warner titles licensed to MGM by Ted Turner, which were now owned by Warner!

Thankfully, the early termination of the MGM/Warner deal simplifies the ownership and control of the MGM library. MGM fully owns and can distribute its post-1986 titles, and all United Artists, Orion, Cannon and Polygram catalog holdings. Warner gets all the Turner pre-1948 Warner and pre-1986 MGM titles. So, for example, Citizen Kane, The Haunting and 2001: A Space Odyssey, to name but three, are fully Warner-controlled titles. But, the James Bond and Rocky series, which are United Artists, stays with MGM, as do post-1986 titles, such as The Birdcage...

Ted Turner assumed an enormous debt and had no other choice but to sell parts of the acquisition. MGM/UA Entertainment Co. was sold back to Kirk Kerkorian. The MGM/UA Studio lot in Culver City was sold to Lorimar/Telepictures. Turner kept MGM/UA's pre-1986 and pre-merger film and TV library, which included nearly all of MGM/UA's material made before the merger, and a small portion of United Artists's film and TV properties (which included very few UA pictures, the TV series Gilligan's Island, the RKO Radio Pictures library, and the pre-1948 Warner Bros. library that was once the property of Associated Artists Productions, UA Television's predecessor company).

What exactly Warner now owns in the way of home distribution rights of MGM material from the Time-Warner merger is still somewhet foggy. Maybe someone can shed some light on the details. I would be curious to know. And please.... no BD fanboys spewing that Warner doesn't own anything. I know for a fact they do own some material from these dealing, but what they own exactly I cannot comment on.

i'm still trying to figure out who owns mgm. i thought sony bought the studio outright a couple of years ago in a bidding war with time warner, yet everyone tells me mgm is an independent studio...too complicated...

i'm still trying to figure out who owns mgm. i thought sony bought the studio outright a couple of years ago in a bidding war with time warner, yet everyone tells me mgm is an independent studio...too complicated...Time Warner dropped out.... Sony stepped in. Sony took a type of interim control of MGM distribution and planned to purchase MGM for 5 billion but MGM decided to sell to Fox after Sony was showing obvious favortism to it's own releases over MGM's. Sony owns 20% of Fox so they still have a stake in MGM without owning it outright.

Here's a link about the sale:
http://www.videobusiness.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6339508

Again, the part that does not seem to be clear is what happened to the rights that Ted Turner purchased of pre-86 content. It was specifically MGM's classic library he wanted control of. With the Time Warner merger it seems like Warner should own them, but there were a lot of smaller deals that went down in regards to content. It sounds like Rocky and 007 were sold or traded back to MGM for sure. But there's a lot more content in that pre 86 library.

MGM is an independent studio as far as production. It's distribution rights they have been selling.

Didn't they have For a Few Dollars More announced on Blu-Ray quite some time ago? That is from 65-66 if I remember correctly...

...snip...

Sony owns 20% of Fox so they still have a stake in MGM without owning it outright.

...snip...


No, Sony owns none of Fox. They own 20% of MGM.

There was a complicated financial deal with a bunch of investors (including Sony) for the purchase of MGM. All Sony wanted was access to the MGM library for distribution. MGM wound up going to Fox for that, so that could backfire for Sony someday...

Warner owns all pre-1986 MGM titles and cartoons

what effect does this have on Blu-Ray?Nice try, but no cigar. If this was the case, then how is MGM selling "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and many other pre-1986 films?

Nice try, but no cigar. If this was the case, then how is MGM selling "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and many other pre-1986 films?

Because, back in 67, United Artists was the Distributor, not the Production Company, whoever did the production ( or now owns the rights) sold the DVD rights to whoever.

For example-

Warner Home Video (1994) (USA) (VHS)
MGM Home Entertainment (2001) (USA) (DVD)

My head hurts.

Sony apparently now controls more than the 20% of MGM, effectively 49% is the word right now, since one of the other investors has given them control of their voting rights.

MGM is at FOX for distribution purposes, after the board felt there was a conflict of interest in Sony handling it, but you can be sure if MGM starts doing things Sony doesn't like, as a significant stakeholder in the company they are going to see that things get righted.

Here's an article from back in the day when the deal was beng done:

http://www.thestreet.com/_tsclsii/tech/georgemannes/10182619.html

It is a conveluted mess but from what I understand, anything produced by MGM up until 1986 is owned by Time Warner. Anything produced by UA is owned by FOX/Sony. Distribuion rights are owned on a "by title basis".
Anything that was associated with Clint Eastwood is now the property of TW. Where eagles dare and Kelly's Heroes are MGM titles that are now the property of TW.
I guess terrible Ted is a big Clint Eastwood fan.
The Bond Franchise was the property of UA until MGM bought them.

It is a conveluted mess but from what I understand, anything produced by MGM up until 1986 is owned by Time Warner. Anything produced by UA is owned by FOX/Sony. Distribuion rights are owned on a "by title basis".
Anything that was associated with Clint Eastwood is now the property of TW. Where eagles dare and Kelly's Heroes are MGM titles that are now the property of TW.
I guess terrible Ted is a big Clint Eastwood fan.
The Bond Franchise was the property of UA until MGM bought them.

Then why was For A Few Dollars More (DVD) put out by MGM? Was made in 65 I believe and has Clint Eastwood (and it is awesome ;)), but I am looking at the DVD and only see stuff related to UA and MGM... no mention of any other company.

MGM's library today

As of the present day, Warner Bros. (through subsidiary Turner Entertainment) owns the rights to the pre-1986 MGM film library. MGM itself owns nearly all of its own post-1986 library, most of the post-1952 United Artists catalog (although it also includes a tiny fraction of pre-1952 UA material), a majority of the Orion Pictures film and television library (which includes material from predecessors American International Pictures, Heatter-Quigley Productions, and Filmways) and the pre-1996 Samuel Goldwyn library.

The studio also owns the theatrical rights to most of the Granada International catalog, including their inherited ITC Entertainment (The Return of the Pink Panther, Capricorn One, On Golden Pond, etc.) library, the Cannon Films library (King Solomon's Mines, That Championship Season, etc.), and the "Epic Productions" library catalogs. The Epic Productions library alone includes most of the pre-1996 PolyGram Filmed Entertainment library, selected Nelson Entertainment -- including the pre-Turner-merger Castle Rock Entertainment library with the exception of co-productions with Columbia Pictures -- and Embassy Pictures properties, and those of other smaller defunct studios, including Atlantic Releasing Corporation, Scotti Bros. Pictures, and Hemdale Film Corporation -- itself incorporated into the Orion library.

Nice try, but no cigar. If this was the case, then how is MGM selling "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and many other pre-1986 films?
Because, back in 67, United Artists was the Distributor, not the Production Company, whoever did the production ( or now owns the rights) sold the DVD rights to whoever.

For example-

Warner Home Video (1994) (USA) (VHS)
MGM Home Entertainment (2001) (USA) (DVD)Hey JBlacklow.... how about doing some research and bringing something to the table more than "I don't think it is so therefore it isn't" You keep making statements that people counter with some coherent research to back it up. If you wish to refute, try backing your arguement up with some actual information. The rest of us here are sharing information trying to determine who owns what.

They're coming to HD DVD. :D

ok, so if i understand correctly:

mgm, sony and fox are 3 independent film studios

mgm has distribution rights with fox for the post 86 stuff and with time warner for the pre 86 stuff...

so what is sony's relationship with mgm? it must be significant for them to be able to plaster the sony brand all over movies like casino royale...

To the best of my knowledge, Sony's consortium-backed purchase of MGM left Sony with a 20% overall stake in the consortium, but they chose to have their stake represented by common stock only (voting shares, as opposed to non-voting preferred stock profit shares), which I've seen estimated as high as 40% of the total voting shares (is this accurate?).

As far as Casino Royale, I believe Sony finagled the production rights for Bond #21 (Casino Royale) and Bond #22 as well, hence the heavy Sony promotions in the movie.

The ownership and distribution rights of the MGM back catalog is convoluted beyond belief. I don't know much beyond what has already been posted above, but suffice to say that any specific MGM title you want to know about needs to be asked on a per-title basis because there are no blanket statements that accurately apply to most of the MGM catalog.

Wow, this was by far the most informative thread that I've read today. I do know that Sony owns CR. In every way you can imagine, including distribution. And if it's indicative of future releases, I want Sony to own the rights to future Bond movies for a long, long time.

so what is sony's relationship with mgm? it must be significant for them to be able to plaster the sony brand all over movies like casino royale...

Sony owns the rights to the next Bond movie as well I think, but after that it's back to MGM control. In terms of MGM itself, Sony owns a chunk of it. Distribution rights were given to FOX (Sony held them initially) to avoid conflict of interest disputes.

@Icemage: Sony owns 20% of MGM, and led the consrotium that bought it. In addition, Pacific Equity Partners, that has a 29% stake, has given their voting control to Sony... so Sony effectively controls 49% of MGM for shareholder voting purposes.

Basically, all post 1986 MGM movies we get on BD will take the form of a Fox catalog title, 0 features and a $39.99 list price. Right?

Basically it seems like Sony's interest in MGM really had everything to do with distributing the new James Bond movies and a few other properties (Pink Panther, Rocky) and that's basically it.

You don't pay $1 billion (Sony's investment) for only that; Sony rightfully believes that there is a lot of value to be had from distribution of these IPs via BD and digital distribution - remember that this was a property that Warner was in hot pursuit of as well. Bond (especially), Rocky, Pink Panther obviously represent the gems among the heap, but with a bunch of TV shows and such as well, there's plenty of money to be made off of the library.

is pink panther really a gem in this day and age? didn't the latest movie bomb?

In the context of Sony's purchase of MGM, it's not about new movies based on old IPs... it's about making money off of the distribution of the old classics. The new Rocky, new Bond's... those are sort of different business dealings altogether (though related in ways to the larger deal).