Physical Media Takes Another Hit!
The Rumor Mill
It is strongly rumored by Bill Hunt, the Editor in Chief of The Digital Bits that Disney is going to be restricting the release of their existing live action catalog and that of the recently purchased 20th Century Fox Film company, to 4K only on their digital streaming platform Disney+. There appears to be few plans in the works to release many of these golden oldie live action movies on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray physical media.
According to Bills research, “The exception seems to be James Cameron’s Avatar, which Disney is banking on heavily. To keep Cameron happy, there might be a chance that the studio will release the likes of Aliens, the original Avatar, True Lies, and The Abyss on physical 4K at some point in the future. But they seem to be in no rush to do so, nor—as fans have become painfully aware in recent years—does Cameron himself seem to be promoting it.”
There are several live action releases in the 4K physical media pipeline such as Home Alone and Hocus Pocus but apparently not too much after that.
Some of this may be due to the pandemic, but most of it seems to be focusing on building Disney+, along with what now appears a complete lack of interest for the live action film legacies of both Disney and Fox by the company’s executives.
Sadly, it appears, that a similar situation may be coming to other well established Hollywood studios to.
Bills insights and comments, even if they only hold a grain of truth, are very depressing.
And unfortunately there is still more bad news from Bill.
Again from the pages of Digital Bits, and according to Deadline, WarnerMedia has begun a round of layoffs and restructuring in order to help the company survive the current business downturn created by the COVID pandemic. The lay off’s are extensive and include top line executives; Jeffrey R. Schlesinger (President, Warner Bros. Worldwide Television Distribution), Ron Sanders (President, Worldwide Theatrical Distribution & Home Entertainment and EVP, International Business Operations), and Kim Williams (EVP and Chief Financial Officer, Warner Bros. Entertainment).
On top of these very significant executive losses, Deadline states that “about 600 employees across multiple divisions are expected to be let go, starting today (8/11/2020). Warner Bros Entertainment is believed to be heavily impacted.”
Considering that Warner Bros. has provided significant physical media support in recent years for 4K remastering, 4K and Blu-ray catalog releases, and especially the Warner Archive Collection. This is potentially even more bad news for the 4K UHD physical media collector.
See the full story here.
UPDATE:
There appears to be a silver lining to these rumor clouds. Disney responded to Bill saying that there are no plans to “discontinue releases in any particular format” and AT&T CFO John Stephens in Media Play News today (8/12/2020) said that the layoffs at WarnerMedia are “not about a need to adjust anything, but rather to make WarnerMedia perform better going forward”……..only time will tell!
Read the industries responses to Bill in more detail here.
This really starts to be a depressing turn of the events, especially now that I have heavily invested in new 4K physical media players.
As always much appreciated for the inside news.
Tomaz,
Yes all these negative rumors are not helping our confidence in the format. However there are still sufficient small, medium and large studios around the world with large in-house catalogues, and a desire to release in 4K to support this format for years to come. Also all new movie release will still go out on 4K physical media too for now.
My concern is that there seems to be a push by media houses to move to an on-line subscription or pay-per-view service. I cannot imagine how these streamed web service will ever provide an image (or audio) quality that compares with what physical media can provide unless H.266 provides a solution. However, I think that this will take several years yet to become predominant.
I have 6 top of the line Blu-ray players of which two support 4K, so my believe and support for physical media is strong!!
I have tried many on-line video and audio streaming services and NONE provide a quality that can equal what top of the line physical media can provide. As for the sound of vinyl….well sorry, very little comes close.
Go buy the physical media and tell your friends to also, so that the various houses feel the support for the media.
Thanks for popping by. Happy viewing and listening.
Paul