Disney releases a response to reports that it’s pulling back from physical media releases – but the original reporter behind the story isn’t convinced.
It’s been the best part of a week now since the story first landed that Disney was set to pull back from releasing catalogue live action releases on the physical Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray format. And this in turn has come following a prolonged period where the studio is also hardly doing much when it comes to catalogue Blu-ray and DVD titles either. Physical media does not appear high on its agenda.
Given that Disney owns the entire 20th Century Fox and subsidiaries library too, it’s an awful lot of movies it’s thus got at its disposal, yet its emphasis is on its Disney+ service – understandably so – that currently houses around 500 films, and has a PG-13/12A upper limit.
Basically: Disney owns a sizeable proportion of history’s movies, but is believed to be retreating from physical releases.
Still, The Digital Bits – which broke the story in earnest last week – has finally got a response from the studio. It quoted an unnamed Disney spokesperson has saying “there are no plans to discontinue releases in a particular format. We evaluate each release on a case by case basis and pursue the best strategy to bring our content into consumer homes across platforms that meet a variety of demands”.
It’s a bit NewSpeak, and sounds like a corporate talk straight bat. But at least it’s something.
However, the site isn’t convinced, with editor Bill Hunt insistent that he is “100% confident” in the accuracy of his reporting. This is, we’d suggest, one of those cases where the only way Disney can effectively refute the story is to, well, schedule some more catalogue releases.
We hope it will. In the meantime, you can read the update from The Digital Bits here.
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