What I hate most about Disney: sitting on the Fox catalog

[Ezekiel]

Just saw a video from the 1995 movie Heat (a movie I've watched three times in the decade or so) and was reminded how much I hate Disney. Another of the hundreds of Fox-owned titles that will never come to Ultra HD, now that the mouse owns all of Fox and is just sitting on the entire catalog, having harvested the company mainly for Marvel, The Simpsons and a few other properties. If only Heat's distribution rights had stayed under Warner Brothers instead of going to Fox before Disney's acquisition. The Last of the Mohicans is another Fox-owned Michael Mann movie I would have bought on the format. It's such a good looking movie already.

I keep thinking again and again how nice something might look in grainy 4K and wide color gamut and then being reminded that it's a Fox title. A ton of Fox Blu-rays were mastered in the early years of the format and therefore don't even have very good 1080p transfers, such as Speed and particularly Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Speed was bound to be remastered, being such a popular movie. Black Swan's 16 mm grain already looks so fine in 1080p, but I enjoy the movie enough that I would have upgraded for it too. I believe the high contrast colors would have looked pretty attractive no longer stuck in the YCbCr color space. Even black and white classics like All About Eve would look great with the added color depth, as evidenced by Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Schindler's List, Dr. Strangelove and It's a Wonderful Life. There are hundreds of others I can't think of, like eighty years of movies.

How fortunate that Alien, Predator and Die Hard all got their 4K releases before the acquisition. Alien was released in April 2019, I believe the last Fox 4K catalog release other than the Star Wars saga, which was always going to come out anyway. I can see Aliens eventually getting a UHD, but that's only because James Cameron has more power than most directors.

 

[Iron]

Disney is going down. It may sell off assets, so there's hope still.

 

[Ezekiel]

Disney is going down. It may sell off assets, so there's hope still.

I see a small net income dip in 2019, after rising every year since 2009. The 2020 report will probably have a huge drop because of the pandemic, but I'd be very surprised if Disney lost enough money that they had to sell off so many Fox properties. It would also make them look bad.

They already own forty percent of the movie industry. I wonder how many more moves they have to make before the government considers them a monopoly.

Another crappy thing about all this is all the Fox titles that may go out of print. It's stressful. I don't wanna eventually be forced into one of their streaming services, for multiple reasons (picture quality, audio quality, control, internet issues, 1 TB/month bandwidth cap). Disney Plus doesn't even have any R-rated movies. I can see them eventually starting a separate service for them. But that's a big maybe. Many movies may just become inaccessible.

 

[BrawlMan]

I see a small net income dip in 2019, after rising every year since 2009. The 2020 report will probably have a huge drop because of the pandemic, but I'd be very surprised if Disney lost enough money that they had to sell off so many Fox properties. It would also make them look bad.

They already own forty percent of the movie industry. I wonder how many more moves they have to make before the government considers them a monopoly.

Another crappy thing about all this is all the Fox titles that may go out of print. It's stressful. I don't wanna eventually be forced into one of their streaming services, for multiple reasons (picture quality, audio quality, control). Disney Plus doesn't even have any R-rated movies. I can see them eventually starting a separate service for them. But that's a big maybe. Many movies may just become inaccessible.

All I can say is you better start looking at Amazon or Best buy and start getting movies you know you're going to watch. Aside from the Alita, Deadpool, and Logan, I really don't care much for Fox's newer movies. I like a good amount of their older stuff, but I already got the movies I wanted, remaster or not. So I am set. You still have a major point though.

 

[Trunkage]

There are a lot of problems I have with Disney. 4k remasters is the least of them

 

[Ezekiel]

There are a lot of problems I have with Disney. 4k remasters is the least of them

I don't expect most people to understand or care, but it gets a lot closer to replicating a cinema experience when properly calibrated, because film has a much broader range of color than Blu-rays and DVDs have, and obviously finer detail. I love how filmic and realistic it looks. I can't think of many things more contemptible of the company in the last few years than buying an entire huge studio collection of movies people love and then not doing anything with them or letting them go out of print. Alien in 4K may be out of print now too. The prices have gone up and I only see third party sellers on Amazon.

 

[SupahEwok]

I think Disney will get around to them eventually. Modern remasters are an easy way to get a good flow of small but reliable bucks. They probably just have other priorities right now with current events.

 

[Kae]

I don't expect most people to understand or care, but it gets a lot closer to replicating a cinema experience when properly calibrated, because film has a much broader range of color than Blu-rays and DVDs have, and obviously finer detail. I love how filmic and realistic it looks. I can't think of many things more contemptible of the company in the last few years than buying an entire huge studio collection of movies people love and then not doing anything with them or letting them go out of print. Alien in 4K may be out of print now too. The prices have gone up and I only see third party sellers on Amazon.

I don't have a set-up that supports those formats so this isn't currently a concern for me, but I'll support any bashing of the Walt-Disney company.

DOWN WITH THE MOUSE!