As most of you know CH stopped carrying new 20th Century Fox and Universal titles around the same time. I believe it was around September/October when titles like Van Helsing, The Day After Tomorrow, and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind did not show up for pre-order or become available on release day.

UPDATE - New Universal titles have been showing up on release day, but some of their catalog titles are still missing

CH never made an announcement about this, so we do not know the official reasons or when/if these titles will become available.

CH does appear to still offer new Dreamworks/Universal titles such as Collateral and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

Please feel free to add missing or upcoming Fox/Universal titles to this thread so that people can know in advance if they will have to buy the DVD elsewhere.

Some of the recent titles missing from CH:

20th Century Fox:
The Day After Tomorrow
Alien Vs. Predator
Daredevil - Director's Cut
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
I, Robot
Napoleon Dynamite
Predator 2 - Collector's Edition

From Universal:

Happy Gilmore/Billy Madison Collection [get this at Target {or pricematch elsewhere} for $16 this week]

Are they going to stop selling older Fox/Universal titles as they sell out? Yesterday Barton Fink and Raising Arizona (both Fox) were listed on the site; today they are missing (which is disappointing since I wanted to get them for enrollment soon). Do you think their disappearance has to do with this or might it be unrelated?

No one really knows for sure if they will phase out older Fox and Universal titles. That is what they did with Miramax/Buena Vista titles.

I hope they work it out because I want a number of Fox and Universal titles on that list.

Seven Year Itch disappeared on me from a recent order and is gone from the website (20th Century Fox).

If they lose Fox and Universal this will signal the end of the good ol' days for us Columbia House (ab)users.

I was wondering the very same thing earlier today, so I browsed through the Fox and Universal dvds I had acquired through CH and checked their current availability online. Of the 15 or so Fox titles, 3 were missing: Ghost & Mrs. Muir, Thin Red Line, and Sexy Beast. Of the 10 or so Universal titles, only Mulholland Drive was gone. Yes, I think I can safely conclude that this proves exactly jacksquat

The best indicator of whether Fox & Universal titles really are disappearing would probably be bga's data-miner, but unfortunately it isn't working right now. The last update that had good numbers was 11/02, as 11/09 and 11/16 were both shorting over a thousand titles, so I guess there's not really any reliable current data other than our own anecdotal findings.

Nevertheless, I decided to look at bga's 11/02 spreadsheet as well as some earlier ones I had stashed on the computer to see if the old numbers showed anything interesting. Here are four snapshot selection totals for five studios over the last year. I'm formatting-challenged so please excuse the ugly.

The order is Fox, Universal, Warner, Paramount, then Columbia/Tri-Star:


01/06/04 - 325 - 440 - 794 - 344 - 557
06/15/04 - 436 - 495 - 863 - 462 - 688
08/31/04 - 439 - 512 - 968 - 522 - 732
11/02/04 - 425 - 483 - 1065 - 580 - 849


As you can see CH is steadily increasing its Warner, Paramount, and Columbia/Tri-Star catalogs whereas both Fox and Universal plateaued then actually declined. Perhaps the decline could be attributed to the elimination of pre-orders or just regular attrition for a now static catalog, but it's still a bit worrying.

To be on the safe side, I think I'll be looking over the current Fox and Universal selections and prioritizing them. I had planned to fulfill my current account with 3-for-$25 titles, but I believe I've put off those Monster Legacies long enough.

I've noticed some Hitchcock titles have disappeared.
Psycho
Marnie
Saboteur
are no longer available.

Other stuff I've tracked that hasn't become available:

U:
Cloak & Dagger
Dazed And Confused (Flashback Edition - Widescreen)
Dawn Of The Dead (2004 - Widescreen)
The Thing
Born On The Fourth Of July (Special Edition)

F:
The Vanishing

It is a bummer. I guess they won't be having a clearance sale on this stuff either. No accouncements, no official word. I think they are in denial

The current Fox and Universal titles will disappear from the site as their stock runs out. If they don't have a deal to offer new releases, then they don't have a deal to continue to offer the existing titles.

It figures, I was going to order these within the next couple accounts I opened.

I got Marnie and Chronicles of Riddick from them before...does this mean they're just selling out and not restocking? Hadnt heard of this

The Chronicles of Riddick you got was probably either "The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black" or "The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury", not the recent The Chronicles of Riddick movie.

I ordered "A Walk In The Clouds" (Fox title) as a 3 for $25 selection a few days ago. It is now missing from my order status and will not show up as a search result.

We've seen this happen before but I can't recall how long it lasted. I suppose until they renegotiate a new deal... if they ever do. I clearly recall this happening with Fox before. Their films disappeared then gradually came back at a much later date. Seems like it was about a year, does that sound right? So it could be a while. I expect to see Fox and Universal back eventually but I think Disney and associates are gone forever.

Yup, sounds about right... May have been a little longer. But, yeah, all of the Fox titles went MIA for a long time... Looks like the same thing is happening again.

grivet - thanks for the excellent analysis!! It's not often on the internet that someone actually takes the time to provide some facts......

I think our concerns are driven at this point by the repeated cases of titles from Universal and Fox suddenly disappearing. It suggests a trend.

Those Fox Studios Classics from DVDSoon for $6.70 each are starting to look pretty good right about now.

The trend continues. BARTON FINK, a Fox catalog title, is now gone from CH. Looks like I waited too long...

It's accelerating. Young Frankenstein and From Hell are both GONE.

"Yup, sounds about right... May have been a little longer. But, yeah, all of the Fox titles went MIA for a long time... Looks like the same thing is happening again."

man i hope it's just that. i tried a search with CH canada too, and those titles do not exist

Apollo 13, Waterworld, Pushing Tin, Rising Sun, Blues Brothers also gone. That's 7 out of 17 that I checked.

I don't think we'll see Disney again since they have their own club.

I don't know about the others, but Blues Brothers has been gone for months. That's out-of-print and pretty much unavailable anywhere.

Same thing with Apollo 13, it has been gone for a long time already. It is OOP. I am still waiting for a re-release of this.