That collection of movies is a gold mine for many commercial theaters - particularly art houses, regional chains, and big-city multiplexes that like to mix things up by sprinkling a few older works into their screening lineups.
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The Little Theater in Rochester booked Fox’s Fight Club for August and was told by a Disney spokesperson mere days before the scheduled screening that a Digital Cinema Package (DCP) of the movie would no longer be shipped then a Disney representative called the theater to apologize for the misunderstanding, and assured management that the film was still on its way the reversal happened a day after a Los Angeles Times reporter called Disney asking them to clarify their repertory policies.Ī recent Canadian Broadcasting Company story confirmed that even major first-run chains like Cineplex will now lose access to Fox repertory titles. The Transit Drive-In in Lockport, New York, which has hosted packed screenings of older Fox films like Alien, Aliens, Say Anything, The Princess Bride, and Moulin Rouge, says those films and others can no longer be screened there. Sadly, Neff’s experience is indicative of a recent trend across North America, where it’s sometimes hard to tell exactly what Disney’s new policy regarding back-catalogue films is, beyond generally making it more difficult to show classic 20th Century Fox movies in theaters.
“Our Fox booking contact offered a very brief apology that she could no longer book repertory titles with the theater,” he says. He asked the theater to double-check with Disney to make sure there hadn’t been some mistake. It was a devastating blow: Neff’s homegrown repertory festivals have shown many older Fox movies, including Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Zardoz, the original versions of The Day the Earth Stood Still and Suspiria, and Phantom of the Paradise.
When Neff’s requests to screen The Fly and The Omen were denied - via the Drexel, which handles the logistics of booking a programmer’s requested titles - he realized the rumors were true, and that he had to stop screening Fox films altogether. Some got calls informing them that an existing booking had been revoked. More and more film programmers and theater managers were reporting that they had suddenly and cryptically been told by their studio contacts that Fox’s back catalogue was no longer available to show. In the preceding few months, Neff had heard rumblings in his Google group of film programmers that Disney was about to start treating older Fox titles as they do older Disney titles - making them mostly unavailable to for-profit theaters. For this year’s Horror Marathon, Neff wanted to screen the original 1976 version of The Omen and the 1986 remake of The Fly, two of hundreds of older 20th Century Fox features that became the property of the Walt Disney Corporation after its $71.3 billion purchase of the studio’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, was made official this past spring. Neff is the director of the 24-Hour Science Fiction and Horror Marathons that happen every spring and fall at the Drexel Theater, an independent venue in Columbus, Ohio.
Joe Neff knew there was trouble when the horror films started vanishing. It is, among other things, bad news for movie theaters that depend on repertory screenings to shore up increasingly shaky bottom lines.
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