Disney’s practice of putting its older titles in its “vault,” making them inaccessible to theaters that may wish to screen them, is well-known, but as a new report by Vulture’s Matt Zoller Seitz notes, since the company acquired 20th Century Fox for a whopping $7.3 billion earlier this year, it has quietly been adding beloved Fox flicks to the vault as well.
The practice is a big blow for smaller, independent theaters that make a good chunk of their money by hosting special anniversary screenings. Because of the broad scope of 20th Century Fox films, it encompasses nearly every genre, from horror movies like The Fly or The Omen to romantic comedies like Say Anything and The Princess Bride and holiday classics like Miracle on 34th Street.
“It may not seem like a big deal, losing access to movies that might only make the theater $600 or $1,000 once you deduct the costs attached to booking them,” one film programmer who asked not to be named for fear of angering Disney told Vulture. “But over the course of a year, it all adds up. A lot of these movies are what you’d call ‘steady earners’ for theaters. You show them, and people turn up.”
One steady earner from Fox that Disney has not yet relegated to the vault? The midnight-screening cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
“Maybe Disney knows that if they pull Rocky Horror too, there’ll be a full-scale audience revolt,” Rachel Fox, senior programmer for the Rio Theater near Vancouver, said.
The most popular theory as to why exactly Disney is doing this has to do with the forthcoming launch of the Disney+ streaming service, but as Zoller Seitz notes, “A more convincing theory is that this is just how Disney does business. We’re now 11 years into the imperial phase of Disney’s expansion, which saw the company buy Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm (owners of Star Wars and Indiana Jones) and become the dominant player in theatrical exhibition.”
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