New Line being absorbed by Warner Bros.

We knew good and well New Line was following Warner out of Purpleville, but apparently, it plans on walking right into Warner Bros.' head office and calling it a career. Yep, New Line as we all know it is officially done, as a company memo has announced that it will soon "become a unit of Warner Bros." Reportedly, New Line will "maintain its own identity and will continue to produce, market, and distribute movies," but it will obviously do so under the Warner Bros. umbrella. The master plan is to enable what's left of New Line to "focus on the creative side of movie-making, while reducing costs and taking advantage of Warner Bros.' distribution systems." So long New Line -- it'll be a little weird without you (fully) around. [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family]

[Thanks, Perry]

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 29th 2008 12:18AM]

Okay so the most important question...Is Warner gonna make them hurry the hell up and release Lord of the Rings on blu-ray any time soon?

:)

[mattbrundage Posted Feb 29th 2008 12:19AM]

I hope this means LotR on Blu will come out sooner.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 29th 2008 6:25AM]

Unless Warner Borthers can pay the Tolkien group their money. I don't know how long its going to take for them to get LoTR on Blu-ray. Warner Brothers just pay them their money and get to work.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 29th 2008 1:06AM]

Hopefully Warner will dig into their catalogue sooner rather that later.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 29th 2008 1:20AM]

whooooo ! LOTR on 25gig disks with 640 DD+ ... just what we all wanted !


Just a Warning Warner..... get your ducks in a row for LOTR ! We want quality.....

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 29th 2008 2:58PM]

I think we can safely assume they'll be relasing them after June, so they won't have to gimp the Blu-ray encode to fit on an HD DVD. I'm not worried.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 29th 2008 2:49AM]

This is really a sad news. New Line, and its former specialty division Fine Line, produced some of the most daring movies of last few decades, including Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights and Magnolia; Harmony Korine's Gummo; and most of John Waters' films.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 29th 2008 2:59PM]

Well, it *sounds* like they will be continuing in the same direction, just under a new corporate logo, so maybe not all's lost.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 29th 2008 2:54AM]

'Twas The Golden Compass did kill the New Line beast.