Paramount considering home video partnership with Sony, Fox
By Richard Lawler 
posted July 1st 2009 6:27AM
posted July 1st 2009 6:27AM
In a bit of news that would have been considerably juicier back in the old format war days, Paramount is reportedly negotiating with Sony and Fox to take over parts of its home video business, specifically physical fulfillment to retail, billing and collections. Reported by Video Business and Financial Times, it seems like the studio is trying to save cash as the DVD market shrinks while Blu-ray and other distribution methods aren't yet picking up the slack. We're not sure if home viewers would notice any difference from such a deal, but with titles like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Monsters vs. Aliens releasing later this year it's worth keeping an eye on, if only for the slim possibility of history repeating itself and Paramount promising exclusive China Blue HD format support in return for a huge bundle of incentives. Hey, it could happen....maybe.
Well makes sense if their Blu-ray production is costing them an arm and a leg in replication and they are not getting satisfactory return on DVD. Since Sony mostly all replication for blu-ray for example, it seems they are the only ones (and their partner Fox) to who get good deals.
I can understand why they would do this. Interestingly enough Fox and Sony.. hmm... what a partnership..makes you wonder what kind of deals were made back in the format war since they are buddying so much.
Not to happy about this in general. I don't want Sony and Fox giving me home videos in retail. Their movies are almost always overpriced and quality is awful and them owning together MGM and Sony owning a bunch of other studios this is not good any way you look at it. At least not for home entertainment
I've been ripped off enough times by Fox to never plan to do business with them again. I mean full on lies, like the DVD edition of The Abyss that was packaged as anamorphic that was actually 4:3 with letter boxing (and the subsequent argument with the store trying to return the f---ing thing because apparently returning something that isn't what it says it is on the box is "copyright infringement" - yes, that's what Fox has told retailers.)
Screw 'em. Something tells me I'll be buying fewer and fewer discs over the next few years, what with the dishonesty of the distributors and the decision to use an HD format with a flawed and draconian DRM system.
Perhaps this a partial explaination of why Paramount licenced BD+? To do business with Fox (who loves BD+ madly)?
More likely they bought the sales pitch (more fool them.) Fox isn't going to care if Paramount's discs have BD+ on them. They only care if their own discs (including those containing content they're licensing from Paramount) have BD+.
Fox bought into BD+ too early for it to be a factor, but it would be more likely that Paramount, convinced that BD+ is somehow not a ridiculously stupid idea, would have been impressed by Fox supporting it than vice versa.
Putting another company in charge of the billing and collecting of money sounds like a bad move to me. Sounds like a real easy way to scam Paramount out of money.