There are so many members on these forums who seem to be wilfully ignorant of the most basic aspects of commerce, ownership and the sheer amount of work required to release a title on disc.
- For the umptinth time, Criterion does not own the movies they release on disc. They are not a film studio. They are a small home video label that LICENSES titles from the companies/individuals who do own them. These licenses are limited by time, territory, disc formats, film versions.... everything you can think of and more, including potentially the cover art and the font size used for a particular actor's credit. (Just go ahead and try to get new artwork approved for a Tom Cruise film. You will be waiting for months for his team to even acknowledge you.)
- Criterion can not sublicense a title to a third party. This is not an warehouse complex!!
- Criterion has always released around 5 titles per month, with a few large multi-film box sets a year. This is part of their business model.
- In the last 15 years, Criterion has released 1,576 movies on Blu-ray.
- That is an average of 105 titles per year. That's between 8 to 9 titles per month, when you add in the box sets.
- That is above average for a small boutique label. I know we're all now spoiled by the dozens of titles KINO releases per month, but they are an outlier. Not to mention that rarely if ever does KINO tackle incredibly expensive and time consuming restorations like the ones that Criterion has done for titles like The Apu Trilogy, Detour, The Lady Eve, 100 Years of Olympic Films, just to name a few.
- Criterion currently has about 60 employees. That includes everyone from Jonathan Turell (CEO) and Peter Becker (President) to the film and audio restoration experts, documentarians, layout artists, the devs running the Criterion Channel, down to the receptionist.
- There are roughly 260 work days in a year.
- 260 divided by 105 is approximately 2.5 days of work per title.
- This means that it takes a team of about 60 people just 2.5 days of time to license a title, chase down elements, have them scanned, restored and color corrected. Then there is the audio work. Then there is the supplemental material to be produced. Waiting on talent availability, and willingness, for participating in everything from color grading to interviews. Artwork that needs to be created and cleared by living actors or the estates of deceased ones. Subtitles need to be created. Discs authored and QC'd. Then all of this needs to be timed with the workflow of the two remaining major disc manufacturers in the world, both of whom are now unable to keep up with demand. If you want to put this in total hours, it's about 1200 hours of work per title. (Obviously every title is different. Many new titles have readymade deliverables that simply need to be color corrected for home video use. While a title like Freaks may involve years of simply searching every archive and collection in the world looking for the best and longest available film material.)
In short, it takes a lot of work to put together a single shiny disc that we can then spend countless hours complaining about. ("How dare they not include Dolby Atmos for a film made in 1952!" "If they don't use the Czechoslovakian poster art for this 1930's MGM musical, then it's a NO BUY from me!!")
And one last thing about licenses. What I'm about to say is pure conjecture as I don't have secret access to Criterion's legal files. But this is conjecture based on decades of experience working in the film industry.
Many of Criterion's licenses for their older catalogue titles, especially the Japanese films, are very old licenses. One thing about working with Japanese companies is that personal relationships are everything. If we just take into account the basic facts of life, most if not all of the contacts that Criterion had in the 80's and 90's at the Japanese studios are now long gone. It is very likely that the new regimes that oversee these properties at the Japanese studios are not happy with these extremely lengthy licenses that their predecessors signed with Criterion.
And as such, they are doing everything they can to make sure Criterion is forced into new and very expensive contracts. We all know how Toho forced Criterion to use very old scans for their
Godzilla box set. As the licensor, it is very easy for you to make life difficult for the licensee. As the licensee, your hands are pretty much tied. You don't want to get into a fight, much less a legal one, with a licensor. Not only is there no profit in it, you will only burn your bridge with that licensor. Not to mention that you will then be seen as "difficult" by other licensors. At that point, you might as well close your doors, because no one will want to license titles to you.
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