Adam Tyner

Maxflier

Brilliant name, I love it.

Josh Z

Indie films from the '90s are right in the zone for me. I'd just gone to film school in the early '90s and made a point of seeing anything of even remote interest in the theater. Many of them were buzzworthy for about a minute but have vanished into obscurity in the meantime, despite some of them having pretty big stars, like Michelle Pfieffer (Love Field) or Jeremy Irons (Waterland).

Spiderbite

Well...there must be some kind of money in physical releases despite the biggies abandoning it.

Josh Z

I think what it's come to is that the money is so small that the big studios aren't finding it worth their time or investment anymore. That's not to say there's no money in it, just that this is turning into a niche market where smaller players will take over.

Brian T

And that niche is often suckered into blind buying a lot of deservedly forgotten films for exceedingly premium prices, and praising whatever 'good' they've been conditioned into finding -- more often in the disc presentations than the films themselves -- to justify the wallet pain. I'm not necessarily thinking of films like LOVE FIELD or WATERLAND here, both of which I recall having at least some studio affiliation, even if just on their multiple DVD releases. I'm thinking further down the old and new indie food chain, which part of me suspects is where a company like Whole Grain might be sourcing their product. And these smaller boutiques have to work overtime convince us that the films they "rescued from obscurity" really deserved to be rescued from obscurity, and that we need to pay $25 to $50 a pop to keep funding those rescues. For example, I think a LOT of the titles on the Vinegar Syndrome / OCN partner labels do not deserve the attention, and aren't worth the price. Granted, they do go on sale, which helps. I've bought many that way, in the 10/$10 sales for example, but the vast majority end up relisted for sale. They're not all bad films, per se, but just kinda . . . meh, nice to see but I would've been fine watching an old DVD. The Criterion-grade disc treatments are frequently impressive, but they're too often in service of films by people who never went on to stellar careers, if at all. Or, they're 'new' indie films by filmmakers who haven't really proven themselves worthy of lavish blu-ray treatments yet, like they're jumping the gun a bit.

I'm curious to see what items yet another boutique label can scrape up, because as you folks note, there must be money in it, and I'm sure that profitable 'sweet spot' niche-collector pricing is well established by now. There's probably still plenty of 'obscurities' out there from the DVD era, too. I'm just not certain how much of it I'll fork over the inevitable big bucks to buy. Time will tell, I guess.

PhantomStranger

I wish them luck but it's a strange time to start up a new label unless this is a passion project.

Adam Tyner

They’re targeting 4-5 titles for 2024. Because MediaOCD is so entrenched in nearly every other phase of producing Blu-ray releases, including working closely with licensors, I get the appeal on their end of starting up their own label too.