Warner Bros. has started The Warner Archive, an effort to make much more of its film library available on disc without a lot of the risk from producing DVD sets for films with limited interest. The Warner Archive is an on-demand manufacturing service, where the DVD is only produced upon an order. So far 155 films are available, with Warner Bros. planning to add some 20 more each month. There are approximately 5,000 films from Warner Bros. that haven’t been released on DVD yet that are possibles for the service. Television shows will also be added, with the likes of Maverick being probable. The site also provides preview clips so you can see the kind of quality you’ll get with each release.
The DVDs go for $19.95 and come with a regular Amaray case and cover art. They ship within a week of ordering.
I see two releases that strike my immediate fancy. There’s Countdown (1968) with James Caan and Robert Duvall about the race with Russia to land a man on the moon. There’s also Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, a film that apparently ignores most of the plot from the Jules Verne novels and simply thrusts Nemo into a new story. Based on my interests, I hope more obscure and lost science fiction films make it onto this service. Those are the ones I’m probably most likely to jump on.
