Here's how the copyrights for this film in the USA were transferred from Orion to MGM in the late 1990s:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Orion Classics was the division of Orion Pictures, headed by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom, that acquired independent and foreign films for North American distribution, in addition to producing some arthouse films of its own. It was launched in 1983 when Barker, Bernard and Donna Gigliotti moved from UA Classics, a United Artists specialty division.
Among its most notable films were "Babette's Feast", Pedro Almodóvar's "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", Jim Jarmusch's "Mystery Train" and Richard Linklater's "Slacker".
In late 1991, when Orion Pictures was in serious financial trouble, Barker, Bernard, and Bloom left Orion Classics, taking the rights to the highly anticipated British Merchant-Ivory Productions adaptation of "Howard's End" with them; at the invitation of former Orion president Mike Medavoy, who was now relocated at TriStar Pictures, the three set up Sony Pictures Classics, with "Howard's End" as the company's first release in 1992.
In the mid-1990s, Metromedia acquired Orion, and merged the classics division into the Samuel Goldwyn Company. Both Orion and SGC were sold to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1997, with the latter's function of producing and/or distributing independent films being assumed by MGM's United Artists division.
There was an original American VHS videotape release of NOSTRADAMUS by Orion Home Video in 1994, followed by another VHS USA release by MGM/UA Home Entertainment in the year 2000, but no DVD was forthcoming.
Dejael
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Dejael
11 years ago
So here we are at almost the end of 2012, and no DVD or Blu-Ray of this excellent classic film, even after promises were made by Roger Christian, the film's director, of a possible DVD release this year, but he said it was really up to the copyright owner, German producer Harald Reichebner, who has apparently done nothing about this, so I suspect the only way this film will get a proper DVD and Blu-Ray release is for a third-party DVD distributor to release this film properly in America, the UK and Europe. I suggest a good company to do this would be Twilight Time, and I will contact Nick Redman and see if there is any interest.
Dejael
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Bibitte79
11 years ago
I see your last post dates of about 9 months ago. But if you haven't found any DVD/Blu-Ray version yet, here's where you can see it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CepMs4BmidM
I agree that this movie should be on sale everywhere (even here in Canada). I rememeber renting it as a teenager and being impressed with Tchéki Karyo's performance. Took me since then to find a copy of it.
Hope you'll enjoy.
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zonehenge
9 years ago
Thank you so much! I recently finished the book and was disappointed to find that the film is not available on Netflix. Really looking forward to this, so thank you again :)
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