So, I’m listening to the Slice of SciFi podcast interview with Peter S. Beagle (note link goes to webpage and not directly to podcast feed) who is talking about the release of the anniversary edition of The Last Unicorn DVD. Apparently, all the copies you can buy in the US used a print that had been through a sandblaster. Folks in Germany, however, in addition to getting good beer and highways with no speedlimits on them, are able to buy an absolutely gorgeous copy of the film on DVD. Somebody got a copy of the German DVD, stripped region encoding off of it, made a copy of it (thus circumventing both the DRM and region encoding in violation of the DMCA), sent it to a friend of Peter S. Beagle, saying, “Why can’t we get this pretty version of the film in the US?”
Beagle’s friend, along with Beagle, go to Lion’s Gate films (who control the distribution in the US), show them the pristine copy and say, “Why won’t you guys release this?” The suits at Lion’s Gate look at one another and say, “How many copies have we sold so far?”
Answer, “Over 350K.”
“What was our ad budget?”
“Uh, nothing.”
Somewhere in the deep recesses of their minds gears slowly start turning. Dollar signs suddenly appear and they say, “My God! We have to release a special anniversary edition using this print!” So, on Febuary 6th, the 25th Anniversary edition goes on sale with the decent print. (If you want to buy a copy, order it from here, otherwise Beagle doesn’t see a nickel from the profits.)
Mind you, had the MPAA and their ilk been able to get their way, and managed to block all copying of DVDs, then Beagle and his buddy never would have gotten to make their case to Lion’s Gate, who probably never would have realized that there was a decent print out there, and that they could release a 25th Anniversary edition of the film and thus make even more money (since many of the fans who bought the crappy edition will no doubt buy the good version). Who knows? If you guys are a little more transparent in your dealings, you just might find more flicks you can rerelease like this.