Fantastic news about "The City of Lost Children". I am so looking forward to this.

Antonioni's The Passenger? Or unlikely?

It's unlikely that Criterion would get it from Sony, since Sony is already licensing it from Jack Nicholson. I doubt Sony has the rights to sublicense.

That being said, Nicholson may be open to making that exception when one considers the BBS box set, no?

Old news by now, but last Tuesday Sony dumped both Housekeeping and Rossellini's Vanina Vanini into the "Classics By Request" line.

A brand new print at Film Forum last year with the Forsyth retrospective and Housekeeping can't even scare up a proper release? I don't really know how these things work but I know that sucks

^^this. Almost exactly two years ago I was in the MFAH theatre watching a restored print of Vanina Vanini (which I didn't know Sony held the rights to; this print came direct from Cinecittà Holding) as part of a series covering legendary Italian starlets. Sony did provide for that series a print of their recent restoration of Visconti's Sandra, which apparently subsequently only appeared on dvd in a craptacular R2 edition. I wonder if that one will be part of a future "Classics By Request" announcement?

That's certainly true of most of their Malles, but I believe that they've actually licensed Vanya from Sony Pictures Classics. This is as much Andre Gregory's film as it is Malle's anyway.

As Tom said, it would be a great companion to a Blu upgrade of My Dinner with Andre.

It was mentioned that there was another round of Sony titles coming, which possibly included Anatomy, and of course happened after I finally picked up the Sony DVD.

It was also confirmed here.

Ah, that's right.

And if they did get Vanya from the Classics division then I hope this bodes well for The Spanish Prisoner.

Haynes' Safe would be a nice addition too.

Crumb came from Sony Pictures Classics, so their library is certainly fair game.

Ah, didn't know that. I knew Sony distributed it on DVD in the US but didn't realize it was under Sony Pictures Classics (I had the Canadian Alliance DVD at one point, which made no mention of that.) That makes me more hopeful then.

A company called Mayfair Entertainment owns the streaming rights to Vanya, so I don't think they licensed the title from SPC.

The sell sheets state Sony and Sony Pictures Classics so hopefully this opens the vaults to other SPC titles.

I'm just hoping that we'll see a batch of Sony/Columbia titles this time around. (In the past they seemed to be on a case by case basis)

I'm surprised Sony let them handle a high profile classic of theirs like Anatomy of a Murder. I hope this bodes well for On the Waterfront.

Maybe it's just a case of Sony being smart enough to realise that a Criterion release is more likely to add value to their property in the long term. Considering how flummoxed most of the big studios seem to be about what to do with their classic film holdings, I'm surprised more of them haven't exploited that option. They'll still own the film (with which they most likely were never going to do anything so elaborate and high-profile), but in the meantime its cultural cachet can be enhanced, leading to further revenue downstream.

I've been surprised by this as well, and that new Criterion imitators haven't started to spring up to try to license studio classics for Blu that the studios don't seem to know how to handle. It seems that with the price premium that CC can command that there's money to be made. I bet that the BBS box set sold twice as many copies on Criterion than it would have sold if Sony released it directly and returned higher margins.

When I heard Anatomy was a possibility, as well as the fact Sony was licencing more to them after seeming to be a bit reluctant, I wondered if the BBS set exceeded expectations in the terms of sales as well and Sony sees a benefit with other catalogue titles being released by them. Obviously this would be more of a marketing thing to Sony, cashing in on a brand that's obviously built up a following (similar to what happened with Benjamin Button) but if it allows Criterion to get at (great) titles they never would have before and are able to do their thing with them then I'm all for it.

I guess Anatomy maybe isn't as popular and as well known as something like Lawrence of Arabia (and I'm pretty sure Sony would hold something like that to themselves) but I'm interested in what else Sony is letting them at. I think we could get some nice surprises.

Lawrence of Arabia would certainly be more than a nice surprise.

We know Lawrence of Arabia is coming from Sony anyway, though, because Robert Harris has been talking it up for awhile now. And AFAIK they've always done good work with their flagships.

Such as Twilight Time or Olive Films?

I'm not sure that these Sony titles are part of a new agreement, or the results of success with the BBS set.

You may recall that when word came down three years ago that a Sony deal was in place, our inside man said that there was "more than one and there's diversity and it's all cause for celebration." That was after Bottle Rocket had already been released and when Sony was supposedly still working on the BBS set themselves. The only Sony title to come out shortly after that news broke was Repulsion, but we knew that that there would be a least a few more. Later, Crumb was released, then came the BBS set. I really think that the BBS set was a side deal not part of the initial group of titles. Sony had produced the set themselves and contracted for its release with Criterion to boost its profile.

That leaves us with the original quote from February of 2009..."more than one and there's diversity and it's all cause for celebration." I can't believe that quote referred only to Repulsion and Crumb, so my guess is that Anatomy and Vanya were part of that group too and something delayed their release.

Hopefully there are many more Sony titles to come. The first few pages of this thread are an interesting read, as they offer lots of speculation (including a couple of ridiculous lists made by yours truly) as to what those titles might be.


Sony Product Currently Under License to Criterion
Bottle Rocket
Repulsion
Crumb
The BBS Story
Anatomy of a Murder
Vanya On 42nd Street