MGM ditches Fox as their Home Entertainment partner
04-Jun-2020 • Bond News
In recent years, MGM has licenced Fox Home Entertainment to distribute the bulk of their titles on DVD and Blu-Ray. That relationship is about to end.
The current deal expires on June 30th and MGM stated in their Q1 earnings report that they will not be renewing. Fox was recently acquired by Disney. MGM said a new partner would be announced in due course.
What this means for James Bond fans is that the back-catalogue of films will probably not see a refreshed release until later in the year. This may be fortuitous for the new distributor, however, as it could neatly tie-in with the release of 'No Time To Die' in its delayed release slot of November 2020.
MGM's statement about their Home Entertainment distribution from their Q1 2020 investor report:
Home entertainment distribution includes the sales, marketing and promotion of content for physical distribution (DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray discs) and marketing and promotion in connection with electronic sellthrough (“EST”). Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment (“Fox”), a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company (“Disney”), provides our physical home entertainment distribution on a worldwide basis (excluding certain territories) for a substantial number of our feature films and television series, including Spectre, Skyfall, Death Wish, RoboCop, Child’s Play, The Prodigy, Vikings, The Handmaid’s Tale, Teen Wolf and other titles. Our physical home entertainment distribution agreement with Fox expires on June 30, 2020, and we expect to have a replacement distributor in place immediately thereafter. Universal Home Entertainment (“Universal”) provides our physical home entertainment distribution on a worldwide basis (excluding certain territories) on certain recently released films, including Operation Finale, Fighting With My Family, The Hustle, The Addams Family and Gretel & Hansel. In addition, for certain films, our co-production partners control physical home entertainment distribution rights. For example, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. (“Sony”) is the physical home entertainment distributor for films in the 21 Jump Street franchise, The Magnificent Seven and The Girl in the Spider’s Web; Lions Gate Entertainment Corp (“Lionsgate”) is the physical home entertainment distributor for Overboard; Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.is the physical home entertainment distributor for A Star is Born, Barbershop: The Next Cut, The Hobbit trilogy, theCreed franchise, Everything, Everything, How to be Single, Max, Me Before You, The Sun is Also a Star and TombRaider; Twentieth Century Fox, a subsidiary of Disney, is the physical home entertainment distributor for 8 Poltergeist; and Paramount Pictures Corporation (“Paramount”) is the physical home entertainment distributor for Hercules, Sherlock Gnomes and Ben-Hur. EST distribution rights for these and other co-financed films may be controlled by us or our partners depending on the terms of the applicable co-financing and distribution agreement.
