I'm relatively new at collecting movies on dvd. However, I'm a long time wrestling dvd collector before I turned my attention over to movie collecting. Over the past few months I have come to realize that so many titles I want are currently out of print and some rather pricey on auction sites or amazon. This wasn't anything different from my WWF collection witch many are OOP but I figure most of that had to do with the name change and lawsuit. I was aware that Disney has done this for years with "the Vault". My question is what is the reasoning for this? Aside from Disney movies or the Wizard of Oz, I figure that it has to do with most not being mainstream or a popular movie overall. Why wouldn't the companies just keep the title in print but not produce a large amount if it's a financial reason or possibly just offer them online for collectors who would want them. Unless it is a licensing issue or a financial issue I really don't see why companies would leave a title off the market for a substantial time. Any input is appreciated.

Marketing, marketing, marketing. It creates a mood of "buy it now or you'll never be able to again!" and those who might have been on-the-fence will now spring forward with wallets in hand. They're still generally very easy to find, but the only reason they put them "back in the vault" is to create an upswell of BUYNOWBUYNOWBUYNOW!!! It's totally lame, dude.

Most movies are usually OOP for a short amount of time. For example the Batman movies (besides begins) went OOP around the time Dark Knight came out or even earlier, and now they are being rereleased. Usually an old DVD will go out of print and then the new Super Duper Special edition will be released shortly after. Do you have any examples?

Some I recently have been looking for are Cool World and Death Race 2000.

Aside from the popular titles which the studios work on to stir demand and create new editions. The studios have chosen to put a huge number of titles on dvd and then put many out of print, especially the slower selling ones. It appears to be the nature of the business and they prefer not to keep every title in print in perpetuity.

^ word. If cost to print doesn't match up with sell-through, it doesn't make sense to keep a title available for the few who want it.

It's one of the few ways our consumerism/ growth economy makes sense. It's just not natural to have access to absolutely everything all the time. (Of course on-demand downloading will change this in a non-destructive way.)

Plus, it creates demand.

plus, this is some awesome writing. Nice job, canaryfarmer!

Death Race 2000 has been released twice by two different companies. I am surprised it didn't get re-released when the remake hit the shelves. I'm sure Roger Corman will eventually make a deal with another company to release his stuff. Hopefully, this time it will be widescreen.
Cool World wasn't a popular flick so it may take a longer time for it to be re-released. It was in the cheap bins for the longest time. Plus side it stars Brad Pitt and the director, Ralph Bakshi, has a cult following so it has a chance of seeing the light of day again.

Basically, it's like this:

Retailers only have X amount of shelf space for releases. Ergo, they don't like keeping titles on shelves too long, because it means they don't have room for newer releases. They also despise packages that aren't conventional (such as many TV series season sets) because they not only don't conform to the shelving system they're using, but they take up a lot of space, too. These things usually sell through very quickly.

Consumers generally have a short attention span for any particular title at a time, anyway. After a few months, most anyone who really wants a title gets it. After a year, it's assumed that few enough buyers will decide to purchase to justify keeping newer titles off the shelves.

The up-shot, of course, is that studios know that catalog titles are always reliable for sales so they keep them circulating every couple of years. To justify this, we get newer editions with better transfers (as technology improves between releases) and additional bonus features. This is especially true of titles that weren't expected to sell well enough to justify the expense of extra features upon initial release, but discover a larger audience on home video.

I turned up Cool World for $5 at Walmart last year. You might try a used DVD shop if you have one locally. Half Price Books is a favorite of mine.

Roger Corman sold all of his rights to Disney a few years ago. There was hope that Disney would release titles remastered and widescreen, but it did not happen. Instead, we got the same old cruddy transfers. Not surprisingly, they did not sell. Then, Disney let them go out of print. Since that time, they have shown absolutely no interest in remastering or releasing any of the Corman library they bought. Unless they are sold to another company, I don't think any of the Corman/New World library will see DVD releases any time soon.

Condorman is one of most F$$ of all-time and may never come out again!
It goes for as much as $200+ that nuts but there is UK-DvD out there somewere.

Condorman is a case of Disney licensing out it's own product to Anchor Bay, then not rereleasing the title after AB's rights expired. Nikki Wild Dog of the North is another AB title not rereleased.

I think most companies keep OOP titles off the market long enough for demand to build back up.

I think Universal did a test of this with Fletch. This title was long OOP, and them magically appeared in Wal-mart 4.88 bins. Not in huge numbers, but they were available all over. Those sold very quickly, and eventually let to the re-release. And I sold my 2 copies from Wal-Mart for some $$$

My 2005 Buena Vista DVD is in anamorphic widescreen.

Can't speak to these two films, but sometimes the license holder will discontinue a title even though the license has not expired. In which case the original studio can't release it until the second party license expires. Universal licensed lots of stuff to Image for laserdisc release. When dvd came along some of these rights were transferred because Image still had rights to the Back To The Future titles. The very first BTTF dvd box sets went on sale from Universal the day after the Image license expired.

I recall in the first year or two of my DVD collecting, I heard about DVDs going out of print that I wanted to I went to Best Buy and bought them while I could.

Today, the same DVDs are sold for about five bucks or less. Sure, it went out of print, but they put it back in print with the same cover, transfer, feature, etc, later on.

Though some times a title genuinely goes out of print..but these tend to be smaller niche titles. But big titles going out of print? Usually doesn't last long. Though if you are a collector and like the two disc editions with all the bonus features, those sometimes go out of print and stay out of print.

As the previous posters elaborated, there are MANY reasons why titles go OOP.

- Lack of sales
- to stimulate demand
- legal reasons
- licensing issues (sometimes studios license films out to other companies to release on video for limited timeframes, after which the video release rights may revert to the copyright owner or be re-sold to someone else)
- more elaborate version to be released (to marginalize the initial release from retail in order to stimulate demand in the newer version and to avoid confusion confusion with respect to multiple editions)
- etc.

I am happy to say you're correct. I must be confusing it with some of the other BV Corman re-releases.