Olive Films to Release Betty Boop (important caveat)

[Super Leviathan]

According to the Olive Films thread at HomeTheaterForum, Olive Films has licensed some 150+ titles from the Republic Pictures library, including the old Betty Boop cartoons. (http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/311707/coming-soon-from-olive-films/330). Under any other circumstance, this would be cause for unqualified celebration, but there is a rather big caveat.


Olive has picked up all the non-PD Betty Boop titles. About 65 or so shorts. They will release them in 1 or 2 boxed sets.


Only the 66 NON-PD titles were acquired. All of the PD ones are out on DVD already.
These 66 shorts will re-mastered in HD

Olive's tentative plans at present would omit at least 44 Betty Boop cartoons which are public-domain, including some choice pre-code cartoons and the color POOR CINDERELLA.

This is disappointing news for several reasons. This otherwise-comprehensive Betty Boop release will be incomplete for nebulous and misguided reasons (and thus inferior to the presentation of the "Definitive Collection" laserdisc, which DID NOT omit cartoons). More importantly, what fly-by-night budget PD labels can do with murky, iffy and often censored prints, and what the copyright holder's official licensor can do with the original film elements are like night and day.

If you're concerned about this, why not make Olive Films aware of your concern? Go on their FB page, contact them, shoot them an e-mail.

[The Valeyard]

This news makes me sad. I've been waiting for a Definitive Betty Boop collection since I first bought my DVD player.

[TheHypnoToad]

Potential missed opportunity. Hopefully something can get worked out otherwise it's back to playing the laserdiscs for my Betty Boop fix.

[thetao]

Thanks for the link. I'd never heard of Olive Films but have been following that thread, and their DVD's do seem "doomed" to be less than complete. Blame their small size, all the existing PD collections, and the lateness of the release. But I don't have a laserdisc collection and will be very happy to team their DVD's with a PD collection like the relatively well-received Echo Bridge disks.

Speaking of Echo Bridge, can anyone tell me if their Betty Boop "lunchbox" has real keep cases inside, i.e. something I can store on my shelf, or just paper sleeves like Mill Creek? (I don't trust Amazon's promo photo.) Here's a link:

http://www.amazon.com/Betty-Boop-Collectable-Tin-Handle/dp/B0015XWUDQ/ref=sr_1_7?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1333730902&sr=1-7

Thanks!

[Lt. Brannigan]

The Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox came packaged with standard DVD cases, So I would assume the same to be true of the others.

[Pizza]

I see this as good news. I assume these cartoons haven't seen much release. This is certainly a sound business decision as any enhancement work on the PD toons would get scarfed up (stolen) by other companies. This way they're covered. I can understand it and it doesn't bother me.

[Nick Danger]

I've got the Echo Bridge 2-disk set of public domain titles. The best titles in the set are "clips" movies of older material. So I'd definitely buy a set of just the older, non PD titles. I'm guessing that it would be the best ones. We've seen how the Popeye cartoons just kept getting worse.

(Another person who's been waiting years for Betty Boop on DVD.)