According to Home Media Magazine, Image Entertainment, which had a hell of a time climbing back from near bankruptcy, has signed a deal to distribute DVDs and Blu-rays for Sony as well as getting the rights to produce their own discs for certain Sony titles. Some of the titles named are Absence of Malice, And Justice For All, and, most interestingly, Spike Jonze's Adaptation for at least a Blu-ray release if not an actual special edition. It seems odd that Sony wouldn't want to bother with a well respected, Oscar-winning title that has a cult following among film freaks. If there's not a market for that, I don't know what the hell would be. But then again, I credit Sony with the majority of the blame of dumbing down and generalizing movies down to the lowest common denominator in the name of appealing to the "general" audience in the last five years, where movies exist solely to push their own proprietorially owned technology. How else do you explain Legion?
The fun thing is matching up Image's prior release trends with what could come from this relationship. Image was well known at the onset of DVD for releasing cult and horror titles, such as the first release of The Evil Dead before Anchor Bay grabbed it. Coupled with that, Image also handles The Criterion Collection's releases. Sony, through their Columbia and Tristar libraries, has a tremendous back catalog that the current regime is unwilling to mine for fear of bad sales. As demonstrated by other repertory companies such as Shout Factory, a smaller company can effectively work out the titles fans are clamoring for, but wouldn't exactly sell to the Wal-Mart crowd. There's an endless amount of possible titles that could come from this agreement, but of course we can only wait and see. If nothing else, hopefully some titles will be getting the Blu-ray treatment that would otherwise of been overlooked. A bright spot in the otherwise continually depressing DVD/Blu newsfront.
A few hopeful DVD titles, all of which were said to be owned by Sony back in 2005 in posts at Horror DVDS:
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