merlinjones wrote:>>50,000 MAXIMUM sales.<<
False premise.
But its not a false premise if thats all they make. You cannot sell more than you make - its impossible. As it stands, Disney can only get back the revenue on 50,000 sales for the investment they put into making the Treasure set. And judging by on-line stores, at the moment they aren't even selling 50,000
WORLDWIDE (because a lot of overseas customers import their Treasures sets).
Look, we can all agree the sets aren't being marketed correctly. I'm sure most will agree its insane that some of the sets aren't released overseas at all, and others are released years later with no publicity at all. I'm sure some of us have ideas on how the sets could be better released and marketed. But as it stands, the sales of the sets are restricted by the print run Disney chooses. And it appears none of the recent sets have sold out - even with the restrictive print runs.
If something doesn't work, you either fix it (which costs money) or you throw it away. The same is true in business.
Slave2Moonlight wrote:The most expensive aspect of producing the Treasures is the restoration, and that benefits Disney far beyond just the Treasures sets. It's something they need to do anyway.
I agree. But as I said, huge investments like full restoration of the Disney archives isn't done for free. And in Hollywood, like any other big business, there's no such thing as a fee lunch.
The restoration department, just like any other department/business at Disney will be expected to make a profit on its expense (or at the very least break even). That's how big business and internal cost centres work. I would imagine that the same cost centre which paid for the restoration work, will be expected to get a return on that investment over a number of years by charging for other cost centre's to access their restored materials.
As for restoration, do you really think top of the restoration pile are episodes from the various Disney tv shows too? They may need restoring in that the originals may be slowly decomposing, or in that Disney aims to restore everything that they own by a certain goal date. But I'm pretty sure if left to their own devices the company would be restoring some of its older live action films ahead of tv episodes. Again, this makes me think that some of the costs of the restoration are shared.
Slave2Moonlight wrote:What I believe throws off that theory is that they were ready to start a whole new line of "treasures" under the Legacy title and look. I've mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again, the Treasures line was never being scrapped, just changed so it would have a new look and probably not have to stick to the old "rules" of the original collection, like having Leonard Maltin, material mostly created under Walt, limited prints, and so on.
And yet the releases scheduled for future Legacy releases are now in the Treasures line. Doesn't that strike you as odd?
I believe the Treasures line was an attempt to "kickstart" (if you will) the sales for this type of material to the early Walt Disney Treasures levels. And it failed. This this (final?) wave of treasure contains
* a semi-obligational release of Donald to complete his run
* a release already announced for the Legacy line (and perhaps it was even fully authored for the legacy line at the time)
* a release of a movie which has been on and off the schedule for years, and is probably only off the normal release schedule now because Disney no longer release older live action films at all. Note that this release also seems to include a lot of "padding".
It's hardly a ringing endorsement for the line is it?
The Donald shorts were probably all assembled and marked when the first set was mooted, who knows, perhaps Maltin already recorded all of the intros and from the vault footage at the same time as recording the contents of the first Donald set. It certainly makes financial sense to do so. I have a feeling little work is needed to complete this set.
The contents for Destino set was probably finalised while the first [only] wave of Legacy sets was being brainstormed. Perhaps some of the actual work was done while work was being done of the titles that were eventually released under the Legacy branding. Again I have a feeling at least half of the work was done before hand.
Finally, the Dr Syn set seems to be an excercise in padding out a 2 disc set with little content. I know that there's a considerable number of people who are excited to get both the TV episodes and the film, but to most of the people - even people who collect and enjoy the Treasures releases - it seems the ultimate double-dip. I also have a sneaking suspicion that a DVD transfer of the film has been knocking about at Disney since 2002-2003ish, and this will be the version that ends up on the Treasures release. And do we even know if the TV episodes on the Treasures sets are restored as such? Or just electronically processed to make the image clearer?