Charmelizard
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- Dec 27, 2013
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With the twentieth anniversary of the franchise coming up, it seems natural that The Pokemon Company International would celebrate it by, among other things, releasing the movies on digital platforms. Judging by recent events, you'd think they'd release 1-3 and 10-16. But as it turns out, not only is TPCi releasing those films, they also seem to be releasing the fourth movie. They even created a new cover for the release:
(Taken from Pokemon20.com, I could not enlarge it)
The thing is, while Warner Bros.' rights to the first three films expiring was well-documented, as it led to the movies going out-of-print for a number of years, the legal jargon regarding Miramax's rights to 4Ever and the three films following it, Heroes, Jirachi Wishmaker, and Destiny Deoxys seems much murkier.
This quartet of movies has seen a change in distribution over the past few years, but only because of Disney selling Miramax. But unlike the first three movies, Miramax's rights didn't seem to lapse a decade after each film's respective release, and DVDs of them still appear in stores. For all we knew, TPCi wasn't gonna lay a finger on these films.
4Ever is the only Miramax-distributed Pokemon movie that this applies to. There is no fancy cover art for movies 5, 6, and 7, and while they are acknowledged on the timeline feature on the Pokemon 20 website, they just display stock images of the films' logos.
Is Miramax slowly losing the rights? Did TPCi gain digital distribution rights for 4Ever but not its successors (like how Disney now owns the digital distribution rights to almost all of the Star Wars movies while Fox handles physical distribution)? Let me know what you think!
(Taken from Pokemon20.com, I could not enlarge it)
The thing is, while Warner Bros.' rights to the first three films expiring was well-documented, as it led to the movies going out-of-print for a number of years, the legal jargon regarding Miramax's rights to 4Ever and the three films following it, Heroes, Jirachi Wishmaker, and Destiny Deoxys seems much murkier.
This quartet of movies has seen a change in distribution over the past few years, but only because of Disney selling Miramax. But unlike the first three movies, Miramax's rights didn't seem to lapse a decade after each film's respective release, and DVDs of them still appear in stores. For all we knew, TPCi wasn't gonna lay a finger on these films.
4Ever is the only Miramax-distributed Pokemon movie that this applies to. There is no fancy cover art for movies 5, 6, and 7, and while they are acknowledged on the timeline feature on the Pokemon 20 website, they just display stock images of the films' logos.
Is Miramax slowly losing the rights? Did TPCi gain digital distribution rights for 4Ever but not its successors (like how Disney now owns the digital distribution rights to almost all of the Star Wars movies while Fox handles physical distribution)? Let me know what you think!
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