Burbank and Culver City, Calif., (April 13, 2011) – Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group (WBHEG). and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) today announced that Warner Archive Collection (WAC), Warner’s online on-demand distribution arm, will offer select catalog titles from SPHE’s “Screen Classics By Request.” Beginning April 13, www.warnerarchive.com will feature approximately 150 manufactured-on-demand titles from the Columbia Pictures film library. Fan favorites among these films include Genghis Khan, A Song To Remember and A Study In Terror.
The joint announcement was made today by Warner Executive Thomas Gewecke, President, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution and SPHE’s John Calkins, Executive Vice President, Global Digital and Commercial Innovation.
“Our companies share the excitement of offering fans access to even more previously unreleased, hard to find titles all in a single location,” said Gewecke. “This is yet another exciting opportunity for us to provide even more films to aficionados and collectors, who have voracious appetites for the classics, and who value them for entertainment, historical context and collectability.”
“Warners has long been a pioneer in the deep catalog business, and we’re thrilled to partner and extend the reach of our extensive catalog to consumers,” added Calkins. “This is another step in the execution of our multi-platform distribution strategy to cultivate the market for the remarkable films in our vault.”
The Warner Archive Collection, established in March 2009, was the first online, manufacturing on-demand service to offer rare film and TV titles from their library, the world’s largest. DVDs are created only after consumers order them via the web. In a little more than two years, WAC has released nearly 1,000 previously unavailable films, short subjects, TV movies and mini-series.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s “Screen Classics by Request” program was announced last September with the introduction of 100 digitally remastered titles (never-before-released on DVD) spanning 75 years of movies from Columbia Pictures.