DVDs to order from Warner Bros.

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AP / Turner Classic Movies

Greta Garbo in "Love."


DVDs to order from Warner Bros.


The studio is opening its film vaults to customer requests, including many film titles previously unavailable on disc.
By Susan King
March 23, 2009
Over the last 12 years, Warner Home Video has released about 1,200 vintage films from its vast library on DVD. But that still leaves about 3,800 feature titles that have yet to make their digital debuts. At the studio's current release rate of 100 per year, they wouldn't all be available until midcentury.

So in an industry first, the company today is, in a manner of speaking, inviting the public into the vaults to order what it wants. And like the neighborhood pizzeria, it won't make it till you order it.

Among the titles available are several early Clark Gable films, including "Possessed" and "Men in White"; "Love," Greta Garbo's silent version of "Anna Karenina"; "This Woman Is Dangerous," with Joan Crawford; "Abe Lincoln in Illinois," with Raymond Massey; and "Wisdom," with Emilio Estevez and Demi Moore.
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The only catch: Not everything in the vault is on the menu yet.

The consumer who visits www.warnerarchive.com initially will find 150 classic titles from Warner Bros. Pictures, MGM and RKO that each can be ordered either as a computer download ($14.95) or as a DVD ($19.95) that arrives in the mailbox approximately five days after purchase.

The studio says it intends to bolster that list at the rate of 20 new titles a month -- including TV series and TV movies. Many of the movies and shows were once available on video cassette, but none has been on DVD, and many others have never been available for purchase at all.

"My dream has always been to find a way to get everything to everybody who wants it," says George Feltenstein, senior vice president of theatrical catalog marketing for Warner Home Video. "No matter how obscure or arcane, there is something in the library that somebody wants. But yet you have to hit a certain threshold of sales potential to justifying making a DVD the old-fashioned way."

That's because it's expensive to release and market a DVD -- even if the movie has no extras.

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[mountain_rage]

Makes sense, but one has to wonder why they haven't already digitized all their movies to a server and simply created an automated disc printing/distribution center for low demand movies.