Question about rights to WB catalog
04-20-05 | 09:44 AM
#1
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Question about rights to WB catalog
For a while, MGM/UA had the home video rights to some of the older titles in WB's catalog. I think it was all the pre-1950 ones, but I'm not sure. Does anyone know the circumstances under which MGM/UA acquired the rights and the circumstances under which WB got them back?
04-20-05 | 11:04 AM
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From: Seattle
To recap:
When MGM was strapped for cash in 1986, it sold it's complete library of MGM films & TV properties (up to that point) to media mogul Ted Turner (who then had a huge catalog of movies to show on his TBS--and later TNT and TCM--cable channels). [see details below]
Time Warner merged with Ted Turner in 1996. Thus Warner now controls all MGM films made before 1986 (along with Castle Rock, New Line, RKO and Hanna-Barbera which Turner had either purchased or merged with prior to the sale).
Details: A.A.P. (Associated Artists Productions) was founded in 1949, and acquired the pre-1948 WB library (including the Looney Tunes cartoons, where you are sure to have seen the "a.a.p." logo) in 1956. A.A.P was bought by United Artists in 1958. MGM's Kirk Kekorian bought UA in 1981. Turner bought MGM/UA in 1986 (the deal also included broadcast rights to RKO films), but then sold UA and the MGM logo back to Kerkorian when it proved too expensive to run the studio. Sony has recently purchased MGM/UA.
EDITED to correct errors in my original post.
When MGM was strapped for cash in 1986, it sold it's complete library of MGM films & TV properties (up to that point) to media mogul Ted Turner (who then had a huge catalog of movies to show on his TBS--and later TNT and TCM--cable channels). [see details below]
Time Warner merged with Ted Turner in 1996. Thus Warner now controls all MGM films made before 1986 (along with Castle Rock, New Line, RKO and Hanna-Barbera which Turner had either purchased or merged with prior to the sale).
Details: A.A.P. (Associated Artists Productions) was founded in 1949, and acquired the pre-1948 WB library (including the Looney Tunes cartoons, where you are sure to have seen the "a.a.p." logo) in 1956. A.A.P was bought by United Artists in 1958. MGM's Kirk Kekorian bought UA in 1981. Turner bought MGM/UA in 1986 (the deal also included broadcast rights to RKO films), but then sold UA and the MGM logo back to Kerkorian when it proved too expensive to run the studio. Sony has recently purchased MGM/UA.
EDITED to correct errors in my original post.
Last edited by FilmFanSea; 04-20-05 at 11:33 AM.
04-20-05 | 11:18 AM
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From: Antarctica
Originally Posted by FilmFanSea
To recap:
When MGM was strapped for cash in 1986, it sold it's complete library of MGM films & TV properties (up to that point) to media mogul Ted Turner (who then had a huge catalog of movies to show on his TBS--and later TNT and TCM--cable channels). MGM later merged with United Artists, so they controlled their own product from 1986 onward, as well as all the UA titles. Sony has now purchased MGM/UA.
Time Warner merged with Ted Turner in 1996. Thus Warner now controls all MGM films made before 1986 (along with Castle Rock, New Line, and Hanna-Barbera which Turner had either purchased or merged with prior to the sale).
Turner had also purchased the pre-1948 WB catalog, so in 1996, Warner re-acquired its pre-1948 back catalog.
When MGM was strapped for cash in 1986, it sold it's complete library of MGM films & TV properties (up to that point) to media mogul Ted Turner (who then had a huge catalog of movies to show on his TBS--and later TNT and TCM--cable channels). MGM later merged with United Artists, so they controlled their own product from 1986 onward, as well as all the UA titles. Sony has now purchased MGM/UA.
Time Warner merged with Ted Turner in 1996. Thus Warner now controls all MGM films made before 1986 (along with Castle Rock, New Line, and Hanna-Barbera which Turner had either purchased or merged with prior to the sale).
Turner had also purchased the pre-1948 WB catalog, so in 1996, Warner re-acquired its pre-1948 back catalog.
04-20-05 | 11:25 AM
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Actually, Turner bought all of MGM/UA from Kirk Kerkorian. Turner almost immediately (like 2-3 months later) flipped the studio and MGM/UA trademark back to Kerkorian, but hung onto the catalog for himself. As you point out, this gave Turner not only the movies that MGM and UA had made, but also the pre-1948 Warners (and the RKO catalog, which UA had acquired in the late 1950s/early 1960s). And eventually, they made their way to Time-Warner, which swallowed Turner's holdings in the 1990s.
But my question is slightly different. Into the 1990s, a bunch of the pre-1948 Warners were put out on home video by MGM/UA. This came up in a discussion I was having with someone about Gentleman Jim, a 1940s Errol Flynn WB film, and whether it should have been on the Errol Flynn boxed set WB recently released. My friend said he thought MGM/UA owned the rights to Gentleman Jim, so I did some digging, and sure enough, in the 1990s, MGM/UA had released Gentleman Jim on VHS. Then I thought about it some more and realized that MGM/UA also released the first DVD versions of Casablanca (a WB picture) and Wizard of Oz (an MGM picture, but Turner bought those from Kerkorian) and probably others. So what gives with that? Was it simply a matter of WB not wanting to be in the home video market and licensing their catalog to MGM/UA? Or was something else going on?
Edit:man*machine beat me to the punch while I was hard at work composing my post!
But my question is slightly different. Into the 1990s, a bunch of the pre-1948 Warners were put out on home video by MGM/UA. This came up in a discussion I was having with someone about Gentleman Jim, a 1940s Errol Flynn WB film, and whether it should have been on the Errol Flynn boxed set WB recently released. My friend said he thought MGM/UA owned the rights to Gentleman Jim, so I did some digging, and sure enough, in the 1990s, MGM/UA had released Gentleman Jim on VHS. Then I thought about it some more and realized that MGM/UA also released the first DVD versions of Casablanca (a WB picture) and Wizard of Oz (an MGM picture, but Turner bought those from Kerkorian) and probably others. So what gives with that? Was it simply a matter of WB not wanting to be in the home video market and licensing their catalog to MGM/UA? Or was something else going on?
Edit:man*machine beat me to the punch while I was hard at work composing my post!
Last edited by JasonF; 04-20-05 at 11:28 AM.
04-20-05 | 11:35 AM
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From: Seattle
Originally Posted by man*machine
I think we all know all that at this point. However, his question was why MGM had the home-video rights to early WB films, not the other way around.
04-23-05 | 11:24 PM
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When Turner bought MGM/UA then flipped UA library+MGM/UA studio&logo back to Kerkorian in 1986, I believe he also sold/leased the library (pre-1986 MGM, pre-1948 WB, RKO,...) homevideo distribution rights back to Kerkorian's MGM/UA HV for a number of years (10, 15 years ?) because at that time Turner was primarily interested only in the TV/broadcast rights of the library he just acquired. Also in 1990 when Paretti/Credit Lyonnais bought MGM/UA from Kerkorian, to fund the purchase they decided to sell/lease all MGM/UA homevideo distribution rights (including the Turner library rights) in most foreign territories to...Warner HV for 10 years (I'm not sure about domestic US HV rights, MGM/UA/Pathe might have kept them for themselves, but the foreign HV distribution rights were definitely leased to WHV). These distribution agreements remained valid irrespective of Turner's change of ownership in 1996.
So until the late 90s/the early 2000s when these various distribution agreements expired, all Turner library HV products (VHS, DVD), including pre-1948 Warner Bros movies on HV, were distributed by MGM/UA (thus bore the MGM/UA HV logo), although in many territories MGM/UA HV was "available exclusively through WHV" itself.
So until the late 90s/the early 2000s when these various distribution agreements expired, all Turner library HV products (VHS, DVD), including pre-1948 Warner Bros movies on HV, were distributed by MGM/UA (thus bore the MGM/UA HV logo), although in many territories MGM/UA HV was "available exclusively through WHV" itself.
