Is the 1994 unreleased Fantastic Four film owned by Marvel now?
You don't see Marvel putting footage of films they don't own on their channel unless they do. And I guess the First Steps featurette confirms that Marvel owns this one and not Constantin (who filed copyright claims against YouTube channels uploading this for free years ago).
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I kind of doubt Marvel would do a re-release of that. It probably looks rough as hell and would need a remaster, which I can't imagine would be fiscally sound.
Which is a shame, because I really wish they'd do that and Generation X. At the very least, they could upload them in whatever quality they still exist in, but I can't see that happening either.
Imagine if they went and got the rights to every Marvel movie they don’t own and made a “Marvel Multiverse” section.
I'd be super stoked if they put that stuff on D+ in even good-ish quality.
The Captain America directors cut suddenly getting released on Blu-ray makes me think that maybe Marvel DOESN'T own all of this old stuff and that there could be other barriers to it getting released (actors having to get paid because of union rules, distribution costs not really being worth the trouble etc).
Also - that's not the reason why Batman 66 was never released on home video, or at least it's only a small part of it. Fox were freely allowed to rerun that show for decades after Greenway Productions lost the Batman licence and 20 Centruy Fox were even able to release the movie on home video for decades (they still have sole rights to that movie).
The thing that stopped Batman 66 the TV show from being released on home video was that residual rights for home video were never negotiated with the actors back then (this has plagued a lot of TV shows from the pre-home video era). The fact that Greenway/Fox no longer had the rights to the Batman IP probably just complicated matters, but I don't think it was the main contributing factor.
At a guess, I'd say whatever remains of Cannon/21st Centurry Films that owned Cap90 in the first place must have home video rights in perpetuity (which would make sense as it was mainly a straight to video release) and they were able to licence the new directors cut release. I seriously doubt Disney was involved at all.
Remember as well - Columbia still put out DVDs of the 1940s Batman serials from time to time and they haven't had the licence in nearly a century.
https://archive.org/details/youtube-DrbFLJHeX8w
It's not great but it is so much better than it had any right to be given the circumstances.
There could be several reasons why they wouldn't be able, too.
Actors contracts for percent of income would be an example.
CORRECTION: Upon further investigation it appears that Disney \*does\* now partially own the film, and apparently has for quite some time. Disney/20th Century owns the post-1989 New World Pictures library which includes New Concorde output...Shout! only owns the pre-1984 library while Lakeshore Entertainment owns 1984-1989, which includes the Dolph Lundgren Punisher movie.
had purchased the assets of New World in 1994. As a result, all of New World's film assets became part of the 20th Century Fox library, and all of its animation assets became part of either Fox Television or Saban Entertainment, all of whom were subsequently bought by Disney. This is also how Disney acquired the various Marvel animated series from the 90s.