RichardLess wrote: ↑September 28th, 2020, 5:24 pmAre you using Sony’s double dipping on the DVD’s as a counter point? Come on dude. Re-releasing Ghostbusters on DVD & Blu Ray over & over again isn’t what I’m talking about. I will say again, out of the 4 items they could’ve released, only 1 was given attention or care by the studio itself. Is that how Universal treats Back to The Future?
Actually, yes, this is how Universal treats
Back to the Future! Universal has issued the series five times since the beginning of the DVD era (next month's UHD release will mark #6), and each time they add a few more extras. Like
Ghostbusters, the bulk of the supplemental material is being recycled each release.
A big thing here is, the main way studios keep movies alive in the eyes of the public
is actually rereleases of the movie on home video, which they will often supplement with merch and whatnot. A new release of the movie gets it back into big box stores and reminds people they want to revisit and rewatch the movie. Theatrical rereleases are nice, but there was a little gap there between the dawn of home video and the return of theatrical rereleases, so it's not surprising there were no rereleases to speak of then.
RichardLess wrote: ↑September 28th, 2020, 5:24 pmBack To The Future 2 is very similar to Ghostbusters 2.
Hard disagree. I suspect any
Ghostbusters II die hard on this forum will happily admit that the shift in attitude toward the sequel has been a long, uphill battle, whereas
Back to the Future has been beloved as a trilogy for almost its entire existence. I've certainly heard of people preferring one
BttF sequel over the other, but I can't recall ever having heard anyone outright advocate skipping the sequels entirely and saying that the original is the only movie that matters.
Ghostbusters II's rep has come up, but throughout the '90s and well into the '00s, I would argue its reputation was not much better than, say,
Blues Brothers 2000 or the
Beverly Hills Cop sequels.
RichardLess wrote: ↑September 28th, 2020, 5:24 pmAnd yes, Ghostbusters was re released in 2009. But not by Sony. It was a limited release where film prints weren’t even shipped. If memory serves they used the blu ray. It wasn’t promoted by any kind of national campaign.
First of all, I assume you will correct yourself when I point this out, but any theatrical showtimes of
Ghostbusters that weren't authorized by Sony would be illegal. Even if another company handled it, it was still Sony's decision.
I will correct myself -- I saw
Ghostbusters in digital rerelease in 2011, not 2009 (I found the photo on facebook). However, Sony did rerelease it theatrically, with as much effort that went into the national rerelease of
E.T. or
Back to the Future, in 2014 and 2019, for the 30th and 35th anniversaries, not to mention again in 2016 to promote the reboot, and then yet again in 2020 as a replacement/what would've been promotion for
Afterlife.
I doubt any of these rereleases used the Blu-ray, but I suspect they were mostly through Fathom Events, which is industry standard for national theatrical rereleases these days. I am not sure why you expect studios would've shipped prints of anything once we moved into the digital era -- I could buy that
E.T.'s theatrical rerelease was on film, because that was 2002, and theaters were still playing film prints, but
Back to the Future's 25th anniversary rerelease in 2010 was digital.
Ultimately, I can't help but think your point of view is based too much on your perception that
Ghostbusters should be closer to the level of something like
Star Wars, and you are using the objective reality that it isn't as evidence that Sony has done something wrong, when in reality, I don't think the franchise has been treated much differently than most of the major '80s properties out there (and in some ways, we're lucky --
Back to the Future,
The Goonies,
Gremlins, and many others have fewer movies, fewer TV shows, fewer comic books, fewer toys, fewer theatrical re-releases, etc). You say Sony could've stepped up and been an industry leader, but I don't think there
is an industry leader -- every company is doing close to the same thing, and each one has had a wide range of results.
Really,
Back to the Future is the counterpoint to everything you've said -- it's not like
Back to the Future has had any new content since 1990, other than the single animated series (
Ghostbusters has way more animated content!) and the Telltale video game a few years ago, because Zemeckis and Gale used their clout to put the kibosh on reboots or remakes. There is no official, studio-sanctioned
Back to the Future convention, there are no books, and the movie was rereleased in theaters once, yet the IP remains active in the public's minds.
Anyway, I will also end this digression here.