Famous unreleased movies

You can buy them both from Gary Larson’s company.

That’s not unique. These token showings allow production companies to sell videos and DVDs as theatrically released movies rather than “direct-to-video”, which is preferable for marketing and/or legal reasons.

I would assume in some cases, companies would do it for award-nomination purposes as well: I believe to be eligible for an Academy Award, a film has to have had a run in a theater in either New York and/or Los Angeles during a certain time period.