Fright Night (1985) (However limited to 3000 Copies) - Page 5

Do you really think Severin is raking in dough selling BMX Bandits for $11.49 on Amazon? How about that goofy, blurry Screwballs movie - do you think that's moving tens of thousands of copies? I know the sequel came out a year later, but it was such a low-rent release it had a non-standard BD case and everything...

What about Blue Underground releasing Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci titles a month after the region free Arrow releases, which tend to have more bonus features anyway? How many people do you honestly think bought the US release of Deep Red, when the Arrow Video release was available first and has exclusive new material?

Synapse? Sure, let's talk about those two Hammer films they're sitting on. If Vampire Circus actually made money, don't you think we'd have seen Hands of the Ripper and Twins of Evil by now? Instead we're seeing Frankenhooker, a title they didn't announce the rights to until last month! They'll get my money for Intruder eventually, rest assured, but even Don May himself went on to say, in the last month, that Blu-ray "isn't taking off the way [we at Synapse] hoped it would".

And Image!? Ha, good one! Sure, let's look at the clowns who upscaled the frickin' Hills Have Eyes DVD as a working business model...

Seriously, these cult labels are used to paying for licenses and then squeaking by with relatively low profits. It's a cruel business, and I'm sure any one of them could have walked up to Sony, asked for the rights to Fright Night and done a "normal" release. But they didn't. If this release were as sure a thing as some people seem to think it is, I'm sure someone would have tried to buy the exclusive rights for a 5 year period, only to get shot down by Wal-Mart... or worse yet, produce 40,000 copies for them and then get who knows how many back as returns a year later. Once a retailer returns it, not only did you lose the wholesale price (plus the lease on the shelf space) but you'll NEVER sell it.

But let's forget about cult film specialty labels for a second. Fright Night was a commercial success 25 years ago with a box office return of $25 million. The film wasn't a flop and it has some appeal to nostalgic fans, so maybe there's some sales to be had there, I get this train of thought... but you know what made even more money thirty years ago? John Belushi's last movie, Neighbors. And you what that just got? A got-dang MOD release from Warner Archives. That's what Fright Night could so easily have been, and I'm sure the only reason Sony is re-releasing the DVD at all is because they have crates full of them in a warehouse somewhere.

I've seen a couple of times the following, and I keep forgetting to ask about it...

A few times I've seen it said essentially that "IF Sony thought they could make money on this why did they license it out to someone else?"

Ok... but think about it from the other side...

Why is someone paying Sony to license something that they don't think they can sell?

Sony owns the rights to a movie... so their costs would be in the preparation/replication/distribution of the movie... but the 3rd party has to do ALL of that + pay Sony for the license... so... the third party is spending more to release Fright Night than it would have cost Sony to release it.

Think about that... IF it is so much a dud, and that's why Sony is "pawning it off on someone else"... then how can that other company make money selling it?

Sony has a bigger mechanism in place to handle movie releases than this third party company... Sony can "hide" the costs of Fright Night on Blu-ray with some other more profitable movie and average out the cost so they can afford to make a smaller profit margin than the third party that needs to make profit on each unit sold.

There is no real response anyone can make to you, try as they may. You simply close your eyes and ears and don't hear - you state things repeatedly that are based on what - nothing, really. You're not in this business, you don't work for the studios, you have no idea what anything costs or how any of it works, and yet on and on you go with arguments that have no basis in any kind of reality. Sony has the masters prepared and they bear those costs - they're not doing these masters for Blu-ray - they're doing them for the hi-def channels and for whatever streaming will be coming along. The licensees do pay for the licensing fee, replication, and packaging, just as Sony would if it were doing it themselves, only they don't WANT to do it because they see no upside in it - they don't want the headaches, they don't want the returns, etc. Why you cannot just admit this is beyond my comprehension. Sony can "hide" costs? Wow. I live on a little planet called Earth and that sort of thing rarely happens anymore and certainly not in the home video market.

But, hey, you're on the Internet - you can posit anything you like and get to see it in print. It's a grand world.

You know, the same could be said for you, buddy.

You've spouted a lot of venom toward people, telling them how wrong they are and how they don't know diddly about how it works - yet you haven't shown any proof that you know, either.

Maybe the possibility is there that you're just posting the company line you've been led to believe.

After all, it's the internet - you can post anything you want.

Oh, by the way: studios hide profits and losses from stockholders all the time. For example, not one single studio calculates the cost of promotion into the publicly announced budget for a movie. That allows them to give the appearance of greater profitability for marginal titles.

Of course they can, but you're missing the point: To Sony, selling 3,000 copies of "Title A" isn't ever worth the salaried paperwork when they could sell 30,000 copies of "Title B", or 300,000 copies of "Title C" with the exact same level of effort. Enter Twilight Time, who work out a price for a limited release the film using the materials Sony has already made for HDTV/DVD. From Sony's point of view, they're getting free money to not release a title the don't care much about to start with! How sweet a deal is that?

Meanwhile Twilight Time is pocketing a small(er) profit for releasing a film they know a dedicated (but limited) number of fans are willing to pay for the movie because they still see value in the product itself - you know, the film rather than the price tag. Twilight Time isn't interested in playing the retail game, and it's hard to blame them - apparently Sony didn't want to, either. It's an unusual method, but it's a safe sounding one that probably sounded better to Sony than the usual process of selling the title outright for seven years and waiting long-term for those residuals to come back.

Twilight Time and Sony split a modest profit on a catalog title neither thinks there's a massive demand for, and fans of Fright Night get to own it in High Definition. Everyone's happy! ...except for those upset over the fact that they can't get Fright Night for $12 on Amazon.

A big company like Sony has much bigger overhead costs than a little outfit like Twilight Time. That means they would need to sell more units of this blu-ray edition than Twilight Time does to make a profit.

This adding to what others posters like haineshisway have already explained about how the business works.

Wait...what?

Sony has all kinds of ways of bundling their distribution to save costs. Further, I can bet Sony's price per disc to have them stamped is far less than a small outfit with less buying power. Finally, when it comes to all the work in prepping the transfer and disc, they have people on staff for that sort of thing that they pay a day's wages whether they work on one title or 6.

Sony could sell them for less and make the same money per disc.

This isn't like making a movie from scratch where I big studio has 20 people for every one that an independent production has.

This is yet another typical example of "outsourcing always saves money" mindset corporations seem to have latched onto.

From TT's Facebook....

a) You'd have to point out to me this spouting of venom because I don't see one instance of it - but that's always what you folks say when you can't really debate. There is not one instance of me coming anywhere near spouting venom and believe me, you'd know if I was doing so. But do feel free to point out one instance of it. Of course, words have little meaning on the Internet and venom is in the eye of the beholder - but offering an opinion and saying what one feels in an even-keeled manner is not spouting venom. You should look up the word venom - it has a meaning.

b) I know exactly how the limited edition market works. There is no conjecture on my part. You need proof? Well, I own a company that's been doing limited edition CDs since 2005 - we've just done our 100th CD release. Is that proof enough for you? I license from all the majors, who have no interest in putting out the stuff themselves. It's an easy/breezy deal for them - I do 1000 units or 1500 units or whatever, we normally sell out quickly and it's a no-brainer for them. They make a nice chunk of change and so do we. And when we're done, they still own the material and can do with it what they wish. Now, what do YOU do that gives you such expertise? Fair is fair, so I'll await your response.

c) I've known Nick Redman for twenty-some odd years - he's one of my best friends. I've known about this plan from the beginning. And again, you come by your knowledge how exactly? What will your next response be - that you don't believe me?

d) I did not know we were discussing what studios may or may not hide from their stockholders. That, of course, is pure conjecture on your part, since I'm going to assume you are not a stockholder of any studio. BTW, promotion is never part of any film production budget - prints and advertising is on top of the production budget for every film ever made. I don't think the studios "hide" this information from their stockholders. And before you ask, I have also been in the film industry for the last forty years. And, once again, you do what for a living to have such expert knowledge?

e) There is no venom in this post. Just facts and questions. Just like you, although I think if one had to assign the word venom to a post, yours would come far closer than mine.

Again, where does this knowledge come from? Brian Jamieson, who was with Warners for decades, would have the ability to get the best per disc prices anywhere - he has built those relationships over the years. This is not being "outsourced" - it is being licensed to a company run by two very knowledgeable people who also happen to be the film fan's best friends - they LOVE movies and you, the fan (if you are indeed a film fan) are the beneficiary because you are getting Blu-rays that would not be released otherwise. That's not so hard to understand, is it? You've heard from the horse's mouth (a couple of posts above this one) that Sony had ZERO interest in releasing Fright Night. ZERO. Squat. Zilch. They will not be releasing it down the line because there would be no point. Just because fourteen people on a message board say that a film is so popular that 3000 copies will fly off the shelves does not make it so. The reality is that 1000 copies may fly off the shelves, 1500 may fly off the shelves - whether 3000 will fly off the shelves remains to be seen - but they wouldn't fly off the shelves any faster if Sony was doing it and Sony would, of course, as has now been stated here umpteen times, run the risk of having some or most of whatever they might have shipped returned.

You simply do not want to hear or understand. Your mind is closed. You have every scenario in the book, but none make sense and none are real. It doesn't matter what I say, what Nick and Brian say, or what Sony says because you, apparently, know better.

Hmmm.

You were arguing with me on the West Side Story thread that Fright Night is a "big" title and now you're arguing against it right here.

Huh? The publicly announced budget (note:BUDGET) for any particular movie has exactly 0 to do with profits and losses (note: ACTUAL profits and losses) that are reported to stockholders. These studios are publicly traded and thus report all financial information if quarterly 10Q and annual 10K reports. You can be sure that promotional costs are baked into the periodic income statements, or if capitalized and amortized over a particular time period they are represented on the balance sheet and disclosed in the notes.

I wasn't arguing with you. I was debating with you. My example here was very specific as was its point - you cannot trust message boards in terms of gauging interest in titles - can't do it. I've learned this the hard way. My point in the other thread was very specific, as well - Fright Night is a "big" title in terms of its theatrical release was very profitable for its studio, so much so that a sequel was made. That, to me anyway, is a title that could be considered big. Whether it sells 3000 or not remains to be seen - we all know there are many entitled people who feel they shouldn't have to pay more than five dollars for a Blu-ray, hence the situation the studios are in.

The points in THIS thread are entirely different and a simple perusal of them will show you this.

Oh, stop trying to use logic - it clearly doesn't work.

Just saw "Fright Night 2011" and thought it was very good: much closer to the original than I was expecting, but with its own unique additions.

I gather it didn't do very well at the box office, so I think an opportunity was missed to do a TRON and release the 1985 and 2011 versions together as a double feature. I think this would also expose the public to the original, which many probably haven't seen and might not consider otherwise. The pressing costs for an extra disc would be marginal and by selling at a small premium over the standalone 2011 version might net more volume/profit than the 3000 copies of the original currently proposed.

I fear most studios have forgotten that when you give the consumer what they want at a reasonable price, they are grateful with their wallets (versus manipulating and extorting the market and telling the consumer what they will get).

You forget that the original is Sony while the remake is Dreamworks, slim chance of making a double feature release there.

I didn't realise that, thanks for the clarification.

However, that then begs the question of why Sony isn't suing Dreamworks for copyright infringement: the studios seem that hard on the public when it comes to the slightest copyright misdemeanor.

Just highlights how inefficient, weird and hypocritical all this "rights" stuff has become.

There is no copyright infringement at all. Dreamwork owns the right to do the remake.

Not to go off topic but could your company please get the licensing and release rights to the mid 80's German goth band Belfegore and get their self titled 1985 album originally released on Electra Records out on cd? It's one of the only albums I know of that's *never* been released on cd.

I am pretty sure the rights for FRIGHT NIGHT's sequels (and/or the property altogether) lied with the producer Herb Jaffe. It's why the sequel went through his short-lived New Century/Vista company (Sony had nothing to do with it) and why the remake rights went out for bid to other studios. Might be wrong on that but it's how I recall it working.

I just ordered The Egyptian from them as a vote of confidence in their mission.

Did you preorder Mysterious Island?

well at least it used the poster art

No, I did everything through Amazon.

You can't preorder at Amazon.

No pre-order option just yet...

I have two copys of MYSTERIOUS ISLAND pre ordered from Screen Archives where i purchase all my movie scores from.

Going to pre order two copys of FRIGHT NIGHT as soon as it is available to do so......

http://www.screenarchives.com/title_...SLAND-BLU-RAY/

For $35 Mysterious Island better be fully restored from the original elements and look stunning. Somehow, I doubt it.