area A - latin America

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by Octavio

I think I got it but would you care to elaborate more on how that works?

Hello again,

I was not suggesting that you are slow rather what I wanted to point out to you is that what you consider to be logical isn't something that actually is (you see the market from a consumer's point of view, the content-owners don't), given that the studios would generate far more by selling their products to restricted markets than by offering Pan-releases as you suggest (this would mean a release containing subtitles/dubs for all of the major languages spoken in a territory of interest).

Example: If Japanese distribs Toho were to include English subtitles on their upcoming Akira Kurosawa boxset (and Japan is a market that overlaps with the US as far as Blu-ray is concerned) they, Toho, would generate far less in revenue than if they sold the rights to whoever is willing to promote Kurosawa's works in the US (which incidentally would affect European English-friendly markets as well). The same goes for Gallic markets (Benelux, France, etc) and North Africa where French is spoken - it is far more logical to sell the rights for the box per market, than do it per region. In fact, this is a practice that works extremely well for Hollywood as many of the films that fail at the local box office typically recoup the loses they have incurred by generating income through sublicensing. Obviously, when you have an intermediary operating between the content-owners and the licensee willing to release a film then this entire process gets even more complicated (which, by the way, is precisely the reason why Criterion have postponed their release of RAN).

Hope this helps

Pro-B