Paramount have pulled six titles from the Criterion Collection
Days after announcing the release of some of their outstanding back catalogue on blu-ray, it appears that Paramount are pulling several titles from the Criterion Collection.
As noticed by r/arm7hemasses on Reddit, six Paramount titles are now listed as Out Of Print (OOP) on the Criterion website.
Those titles are:
- Days of Heaven
- Don’t Look Now
- Harold and Maude
- La Dolce Vita
- Nashville
- Rosemary’s Baby
Not just that but The Friends of Eddie Coyle, in the wake of the 50% flash sale, is ‘Currently Unavailable’. Will it return to stock?
On March 1 Paramount announced not only Paramount+ (a relaunch of their CBS All Access streaming platform) but also some of their back catalogue would be joining the Paramount Presents brand.
The brand, announced in March last year, includes spine numbers a la Criterion and boujie packaging
The films announced on March 1 include: Days of Heaven, Don’t Look Now and Rosemary’s Baby — all scheduled for Region A releases on May 25 (among others that are not currently part of the CC such as The Saint and The Tuxedo).
It’s also worth noting that The Parallax View, which was only released on Criterion last month, is still available (but for how long?).
Why is this bad?
For devout Criterion collectors there is likely to be a mad scramble for the six OOP titles before their price sky-rockets (see: The Third Man blu-ray which can fetch more than $100).
For some boutique collectors it’s Criterion or nothing. A heads up might have been nice.
There will also be fears other Paramount titles will be pulled — The Virgin Suicides, Mikey and Nicky, Heaven Can Wait etc (Paramount’s catalogue is among the very best).
And what for Essential Fellini? The mammoth boxset includes 11 features, one of them La Dolce Vita.
It’s also worth noting that Harold and Maude — not yet announced by Paramount Presents, is also OOP for Region B collectors with the Masters of Cinema release discontinued (Nashville is still available and
Why is this good?
The boutique blu-ray market is hotter than ever and while Criterion are widely seen as the big dogs of the industry a little friendly competition never hurt anyone.
At the moment it’s just those six Paramount titles that have been pulled and that could well just be down an agreement between Criterion and Paramount.
The Paramount Presents label has been around since last spring and is starting to carve out a decent name for itself with some very nice Region A releases of classics such as Fatal Attraction and Elvis’s King Creole (which hadn’t been released on blu before).
Criterion cannot be relied upon to single-handedly upgrade every film with the highest spec release. Paramount could make a lot of film fans happy putting out, say, Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead or Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan — both of which have never graced blu-ray.
So, where are we?
Let’s all take a deep breath. Licences rarely last forever (although Janus titles on Criterion are likely to stay in print indefinitely) and when you take international markets and different regions into account, titles can move around a lot. That’s not to mention UHD releases.
Pretty soon Paramount Presents could be mentioned in the same breath as Arrow, Indicator, Criterion and Vinegar Syndrome as an established boutique label in their own right (although there’s no indication of them moving to Region B for those of us in Europe).
For the blu-ray.com discussion of the Paramount announcement click here.
