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Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?
- anna41517 2y ago[dead]
- timmg 2y agoI assume they get "monetization" from Youtube and they don't need to worry about hosting or discovery. Probably better than doing nothing with these films.
- fsckboy 2y agoagree. as a 2nd order effect, crowds out the competition: every 90 minutes spent watching a low value film of yours is time not spent watching anything of the competition.
- browningstreet 2y agoI'm a little surprised there isn't more of this. Building a streaming service is pretty expensive.. a lot of the platforms lost money doing so and really only made it back when they merged into an umbrella of other services. I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited.
- wslh 2y agoCould you please expand on your "viral indie release to Youtube" idea? I am just a YT basic user and don't know what is there and what is not beyond HN, random videos, and my relatively simple use cases (e.g. music videos, and movie trailers).
- ryanmcbride 2y agoIndie film makers release a lot of their work on youtube.
- browningstreet 2y agoThere hasn't really been a Blair Witch Project movie happening on Youtube yet...
- wslh 2y agoI get that the real issue isn't just YouTube, but that no other horror film, or otherwise, has really matched Blair Witch Project's combination of impact, marketing success, micro-budget, and cultural phenomenon. I just speculate that if Blair Witch Project were made today, it would likely debut on a platform like YouTube before gaining wider recognition.
- mindcrime 2y agoThe best example I can think of is already mentioned up-thread, but just to drill down on that. Kung Fury[1] was initially released on Youtube (and a few other services, mostly in other countries I think) and became a pretty big viral hit. Enough so that the filmmaker eventually signed a deal to make a sequel[2] with distribution by a traditional film company and some big-name stars. Unfortunately the release of the sequel has been held up for "legal reasons" and FSM only knows when or if it will see the light of day. :-( Anyway, not as big as BWP, but still a decent example of the concept under discussion, I think. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury_2
- ryanmcbride 2y agoJust because the quality of the things people upload there isn't up to the arbitrary standards of "as good as the Blair Witch Project" doesn't mean its less valuable
- duxup 2y agoI'm surprised a lot of things aren't more accessible. So much content not making money / available ANYWHERE. I assume, that maybe the amount of difficulty in terms of getting permission is too high to bother so nobody does?
- browningstreet 2y agoI have a list of movies you can't find anywhere, not even for pay, not even on on obscure services. I check every once in a while to see if they pop up (JustWatch.us is great for this, IMDB is copying). Example: "Amateur" by Hal Hartley, though it's easy enough to buy copies on DVD. The problem is once the rights for a title end up in a library, the accessibility considerations operate at the library level, not the title level. So if some company owns the rights to "n" titles en masse, they're negotiating for the distribution rights to that library. You can't really pull a Taylor Swift or Def Leppard "re-record for rights" move with movies. UPDATE: Happy to be wrong about my cited example.. Thanks @andsoitis !
- a_imho 2y agoNot sure how obscure you are willing to go, but a quick look on private trackers do list the movie.
- andsoitis 2y ago> browningstreet 43 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–] I have a list of movies you can't find anywhere, not even for pay, not even on on obscure services. I check every once in a while to see if they pop up (JustWatch.us is great for this, IMDB is copying). Example: "Amateur" by Hal Hartley, though it's easy enough to buy copies on DVD. It IS available to stream! See https://www.halhartley.com/amateur https://www.halhartley.com/amateur
- browningstreet 2y agoTou-freakin'-che
- mason55 2y ago
- ANighRaisin 2y agoThere have been more niche shows that became quite popular after a YouTube release.
- eptcyka 2y agoMovies are capital intensive, a movie is less likely to go viral than a video that is made to be viral. Thus, doing this is risky. Also, people wanting to create viral movies probably do not want to make viral videos.
- al_borland 2y agoThese old movies have already made their money. Anything they can get now is just gravy. It’s a Wonderful Life is popular because the copyright expired and TV stations could play it for free. Playing it so much got people to watch, and now it’s a classic. It bombed originally. Putting old movies on YouTube gives them a chance at a second life, and the studio doing it, means they can still earn some money on something that would otherwise just sit in a vault somewhere.
- eptcyka 2y agoI don’t disagree with you, but the original commentor posed the qeustion Why don’t indie film producers choose to premier on YouTube?.
- dehugger 2y agoKung Fury would be my go-to example of "viral indie release".
- illwrks 2y agoMovie rights will be a big factor also. Events like TIFF, Cannes etc, while being a platform to show films is also where deals are done, distribution rights are signed always for different territories etc. YouTube is essentially international which may invalidate some pre-existing licence and distribution agreements.
- delecti 2y agoYoutube has the ability to limit videos to certain markets. One example is that the entirety of Mythbusters was uploaded in the past couple years, but isn't available to view in the US.
- illwrks 2y agoI wasn't really aware of this, I guess using a VPN would get around the issue though?
- crashingintoyou 2y agoHave you never gotten an error about something being unavailable in your region on Youtube?
- fsflover 2y ago> Building a streaming service is pretty expensive.. It's not. At least not for companies of that size. There is PeerTube for that: https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/. It can even decrease the load to your servers by spreading the trafic over peers.
- andsoitis 2y agoCreating and running a (direct to consumer) profitable streaming service takes a lot more than just “infrastructure”.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fsflover 2y agoWhich problems are you expecting if you already have the content, the servers and the software? It's a famous company; people would definitely watch their movies for a small payment or with ads.
- jerf 2y ago"I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited." There's a lot of "indies releasing things to YouTube directly". However, they're limited both by the algorithm and by the amount of money they can generate by that, so you get a fairly restricted set of genres that this can work with, like sketch comedy or (perhaps a bit surprisingly to me) science documentaries, like Veritasium or Practical Engineering. These are basically indie filmmakers doing a very indie thing that doesn't fit anywhere else. Movies are, after all, as affected by their release technology as anything else. There's a reason they're all 80-130 minutes, and they have their own genre restrictions as a result of it, especially if you think of it in terms not just of binary possibility but how popular things are. It isn't reasonable to expect a very different distribution method to result in "movies" you'd recognize from the cinema any more than it is reasonable to expect that television would only ever have run "movies" and never developed its own genres that don't work in cinema. Taking into account the need for the content to match its distribution there's a ton of indie stuff on YouTube. What I would say you are really seeing is the restrictiveness of "The Algorithm", and that is an interesting question to ponder on its own.
- browningstreet 2y agoGot some recommendations?
- cons0le 2y agoOn youtube , watch Space King
- tart-lemonade 2y agoIn a similar vein, I remember reading somewhere that creating shows for direct-to-streaming is liberating because, although it is quite similar to TV in that it's telling a story in chunks (usually 30 to 60 minutes) without a guarantee of continuation (renewal), you don't have the primary constraints of traditional television: fitting into a specific time slot, saving time for commercials, and creating hooks that lead neatly into each ad break to get the audience to stick around.
- korse 2y agoI think you missed a decade or two. This was already a thing and the mainstream didn't exactly have the appetite for it. Check out 'web series' on Wikipedia. I don't know what you're into but "The Guild" is pretty excellent example of the form.
- nemomarx 2y agoI've seen a few things go that route - Hazbin Hotel was a YouTube pilot ish thing and got picked up on Amazon, I think amazing digital circus got grabbed by someone too. No one seems to stay on YouTube when it happens though.
- derektank 2y agoI would argue KanePixels (Kane Parsons) is doing the Indie filmmaker thing very successfully on YouTube. He went from creating a viral hit with his interpretation of The Backrooms, signed a deal with A24, and has continued releasing his own horror short films in the interim. The format isn't the standard 90-120 minutes of most studio movies but his longest videos are nearly an hour long and with each narrative spread across several videos, stitching the whole thing together would look something like a conventional film https://m.imdb.com/name/nm10735410/ https://m.imdb.com/name/nm10735410/
- wongarsu 2y agoRooster Teeth (of "Red vs Blue" and "RWBY" fame) did the "indie filmmaker on youtube" thing pretty successfully. Eventually they moved to their own site, then fell apart after a lot of drama and internal differences. Also vaguely guestures at all of youtube. Most youtube creators are independent, and a lot of them have higher production value than indie movies. You just don't recognize them because of how the algorithm and monetization favor regular installments of ~10 minute episodes, causing most content to take that form. A documentary simply works better on youtube as a Tom Scott video than as a 45 minute piece (though there are plenty of those too)
- bombcar 2y agoApparently one of the original Rooster Teeth guys bought the rights back and is going to do something ...
- nabeards 2y agoAs someone who has built a streaming service, I’m always amazed how much money the studios throw at it and don’t have something good or profitable. The infra cost for my service was then 10% of revenue. I just wish the huge consolidation hadn’t happened, now all of the studios are too protective of their content. If anyone has ideas for re-purposing or re-targeting a streaming service, I’m all ears.
- philistine 2y agoGo for international movies. A lot of them have incredibly convoluted rights, so the biggest expense is going to be negociations, but if you can become a destination to find obscure films from varied countries, it might be possible to eke out a slice of the pie.
- al_borland 2y agoThere is a price to pay for the control they’re trying to maintain. That price is called profit, in most cases.
- bluedevil2k 2y agoThe only 2 companies that made money during the “streaming wars” were Netflix, which had the infrastructure in place already and didn’t need to build anything from scratch, and Sony, which decided not to build any streaming service and just license all its content out. Seems WBD is following the lead of a winner. * https://www.yahoo.com/tech/sony-succeeded-becoming-powerful-arms-220000696.html https://www.yahoo.com/tech/sony-succeeded-becoming-powerful-...
- enragedcacti 2y agoIs it really following the lead of a winner if you started by building your own failing streaming service, then buying another streaming service and merging them, and only then starting to license out content?
- mason55 2y agoSure - that's why Sony is the winner. Other companies tried other things and lost. Now they see what the winner did and they're following their lead. When WB started all this it wasn't clear what the winning strategy was going to be. Now that it is clearer, they're just following.
- com2kid 2y agoWarner Bros didn't buy out Discovery, other way around really. In return for taking on loads of debt, Discovery got ownership of WB. HBO Max was an incredibly lean org, around 200-300 engineers at launch, 1/10th the size of its competitors but we launched a similar scaled service (tens of millions of domestic users, followed up by international launches one after another). IMHO once COVID ended and HBO Max just became a streaming destination instead of having movies "launched" on it, they'd be just fine in terms of profit (and indeed iirc the successor Max service is profitable). First releasing big block busters doesn't drive enough user growth to pay for the movie, but if you have an existing content pipeline then having a streaming service as another delivery platform becomes reasonable.
- jandrese 2y ago
- extraduder_ire 2y agoIt's also the same channel they put their new trailers on, so the increased watch time should really help with getting their other videos recommended more.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoIf it's like a regular YT video and monetized as such, there's going to be regular ad breaks... which effectively makes it just like watching a film on cable TV, and I suspect the amount they would earn is similar. Although iirc a cable channel would pay a fixed amount for the syndication rights, then their profit would be from ads in turn, in this case the profits would go straight to the publisher after Youtube takes its cut.
- softwaredoug 2y agoThese are movies nobody is lining up to syndicate, for a company desperate for cash. Why not dump them on YouTube and get a bit of ad revenue? It’s low effort relative to the income it generates. Even if it’s unlikely to make much money.
- ninth_ant 2y agoThe why not is because it potentially devalues the prestige of the individual work’s IP, and the brand in general. This is short-term optimization, par for the course with the new Disovery-owned Warner Bros.
- marinmania 2y agoI thought that at first, but if you look at the movies its hard to say any have much prestige? And you could probably make the case that getting more eyeballs on it will, if anything, make them a bit more valuable in 10 years. I still remember watching the same shitty movies on cable over and over as a kid just because they were available, and I imagine those movies have a higher place in the collective memory now because they were available. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5hv69XiegDm6tQ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h... Though I would imagine if you were Tom Hanks or Ryan Reynolds you may be upset some of your least popular work is now the most accessible.
- philistine 2y agoWell, if any of these movies ever end up in a box like this I'm going to feel ripped off. That's the prestige those movies have now lost. https://shop.warnerbros.co.uk/products/warner-bros-100th-anniversary-studio-collection-4k-ultra-hd-1939 https://shop.warnerbros.co.uk/products/warner-bros-100th-ann...
- lotsofpulp 2y agoThis stage was set 7 years ago when ATT overpaid for Time Warner by $60B+. There was no way to recover from that.
- greener_grass 2y agoThere's a small chance they will get a cult following with more exposure and lead to increase in value of the IP.
- tantalor 2y agoOh nice they got The Science of Sleep (2006) on here, great film with Gael García Bernal by Michel Gondry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAyg_ENvHzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAyg_ENvHzc
- noneeeed 2y agoI'd forgotten all about that film, it was delightful.
- Finnucane 2y agoSaw that in the theater, and remembered liking it quite a bit. May have to watch it again. I recall the animation was quite impressive.
- bsimpson 2y agoTwenty years later, I still remember the images of making a cottonball float like a cloud, and piloting a pneumatic tube of toilet paper rolls.
- interludead 2y agoI like that this article made us reminisce (or for some, discover) old and somewhat forgotten films.
- flyinghamster 2y agoAs always, don't count on it lasting. Nevertheless, it's a welcome move from WB, even if I've already fallen out of movie watching. I'm quite surprised they did it region-free.
- boohoo123 2y agoMy guess would be offloading storage space while adding monetization revenue.
- tombert 2y agoIs storage space for this significant? I doubt they're deleting the master copies or the master renders or anything, so the only thing that would be offloaded would be the "consumer" renders. A Blu-ray movie with no additional compression added is between 15-40 gigs. A consumer like me has a 300 terabyte storage array, presumably Warner Bros has even more than that (and certainly could afford more than that), so it feels like 40 gigs per movie is basically nothing.
- johnwheeler 2y agoIt’s got Suburbia on there.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- catlikesshrimp 2y agoMaybe this helps their efforts agaisnt illegal hosting of those old movies? It is available for free for users, and they will keep attacking piracy. They can at any time substitute the full movies with ads to buy the collection, before IP expires. It is a low cost experiment.
- elicash 2y ago> By releasing a handful of hidden gems next to some of the worst films it ever released, WBD is doing a disservice to its creative teams of past and present Making older movies publicly available at no cost (albeit with ads) is good, actually? Is the suggestion that there's no bad content on Max and that's why they should put the movies there, instead, behind a paywall? Instead of Youtube, he wants these movies next to Dr. Pimple Popper? (Ironically, I'm pretty sure this is #1 on Hacker News because people appreciate the heads-up about the free resource, and not because folks support his call to remove them from public view.)
- duxup 2y agoI'm surprised by the quality of some of these movies, they're not no name failures.
- tombert 2y agoIt would be great if they started putting the canceled and removed cartoons on YouTube as well. Stuff like Final Space, Close Enough, and Infinity Train, which AFAIK has no legal way of watching anymore, could get a new audience on YouTube.
- meinersbur 2y agoThe problem here (and problably the reason why they were removed from paid streaming services) are residuals [1]: Even if nobody watches them, studios still may have to pay actors, directors, writers, etc. a share. I assume the movies put on YouTube don't have any residual agreements. [1] https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-tv-and-theatrical-residuals-quick-guide https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-tv-and-theatrical-residua...
- tombert 2y agoYeah, and I suspect also potential weirdness with tax law and writing off TV shows as a loss makes it hard to release again. I actually do have legit copies of Infinity Train, I bought all four seasons on Amazon before the huge purge a couple years ago, but I would like legit copies of Close Enough. I genuinely don't know what Warner Bros actually wants us to do? Is their official stance "it's ok to pirate it"?
- jerf 2y agoFor your searching convenience, they do seem to have all their full movies in a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Y4rNBCLaU&list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5hv69XiegDm6tQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Y4rNBCLaU&list=PL7Eup7JXSc... That will pop up to The 11th Hour but the playlist has them all.
- akovaski 2y agoA link to just the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5hv69XiegDm6tQ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h... From IMDb: The 11th Hour (2007, Documentary, 7.2) The Wind and the Lion (1975, Adventure Epic, 6.8) Mr. Nice Guy (1997, Martial Arts Dark Comedy, 6.2) City Heat (1984, Buddy Cop, 5.5) Michael Collins (1996, Docudrama, 7.1) The Adventures Of Pluto Nash (2002, Space Sci-Fi Comedy, 3.9) Chaos Theory (2007, Comedy Drama Romance, 6.6) Mutiny on the Bounty (1962, Historical Globetrotting Adventure, 7.2) Dungeons & Dragons (2000, Adventure Fantasy, 3.7) Return Of The Living Dead Part II (1988, Zombie Horror Comedy, 5.7) The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990, Dark Comedy, 5.6) The Accidental Tourist (1988, Comedy Drama Romance, 6.7) Critters 4 (1992, Horror Sci-Fi, 4.1) Murder in the First (1995, Legal Thriller, 7.3) The Year of Living Dangerously (1982, Drama Romance War, 7.1) December Boys (2007, Drama Romance, 6.5) Waiting for Guffman (1996, Satire, 7.4) Lionheart (1987, Adventure Drama, 5.1) Oh, God! (1977, Comedy Fantasy, 6.6) Crossing Delancey (1988, Comedy Romance, 6.9) Price of Glory (2000, Drama Sport, 6.1) Flight of the Living Dead (2007, Horror, 5.1) Deal of the Century (1983, Dark Comedy Satire Crime, 4.6) Deathtrap (1982, Dark Comedy Suspense Mystery, 7.0) The Mission (1986, Historical Epic Jungle Adventure, 7.4) SubUrbia (1996, Comedy Drama, 6.7) Hot To Trot (1988, Comedy Fantasy, 4.5) True Stories (1986, Comedy Musical, 7.2) The Science of Sleep (2006, Quirky Comedy Drama Romance, 7.2) The Big Tease (1999, Comedy, 6.1)
- realce 2y ago> Return Of The Living Dead Part II (1988, Zombie Horror Comedy, 5.7) My favorite zombie flick, if you've not seen it you need to!
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- vintermann 2y agoMy guess it's that they do it to discover what "hidden gems" actually have potential, and that they may not stay free.
- mcoliver 2y agoBingo. YouTube has a massive audience and builtin social aspects. Something will eventually go viral from this and draw customer acquisition to the WB platform.
- fullshark 2y agoI can't imagine any of these have potential. The Crossing Delancy cinematic universe isn't coming anytime soon. I think they just want some short term juice.
- dageshi 2y agoHonestly maybe just because they can? They have these relatively obscure movies that aren't really worth much so why not throw them on youtube and give them the best possible chance of being watched. I think it's a great move honestly, I know a tv show from the UK that's been doing the same, hopefully more shows/movies will do it as well.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lxgr 2y agoOld movies have been available on various "free ad-supported streaming television" for a while now, so I'm actually more surprised it took copyright holders that long to realize that Youtube also shows ads and doesn't require people to install some wonky app that might or might not be available for their platform. Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex etc. etc., so I could imagine it was just a matter of waiting out until the last person putting up a veto retired or moved on to other things.
- SteveNuts 2y agoI assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.
- vlan0 2y agoBandwidth is a part, but that’s an easy hurdle. But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money. The juice really has to be worth the squeeze. Similar to running on-prep vs cloud.
- DanielHB 2y agoThere are B2B SaaS services for streaming content, you upload the file they host and stream it for you with some API integrations to restrict access. Although I imagine they cost more than youtube's cut from ad-revenue.
- dylan604 2y ago> But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money Take Netflix for example. Their CDN at scale is pretty good for VOD type of delivery, but they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming. Even Twit..er, X falls down with their large event live streaming. Adding the "live" component makes everything just that much harder
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- shrikant 2y agoThe full list: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5hv69XiegDm6tQ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...
- godshatter 2y agoMr. Nice Guy has 15M views so far. I don't know what that comes out to in ad revenue, but it seems like maybe this was a good idea. Most of the others don't have anywhere near this, though.
- andix 2y agoFree money? It's probably zero effort to upload them to YouTube. People watch them. YouTube generates ad revenue and pays out Warner Brothers. They probably choose the movies nobody wants to pay for any more on VoD/DVD and nobody views on paid streaming services.
- HighChaparral 2y agoIt’s Zaslav-era WB so there’s probably some kind of weird tqx write-off happening, or some contractual agreement that they’re living up to in the cheapest way possible. Some good stuff on there - shout out to The Mission, which includes one of Morricone’s greatest scores.
- xhkkffbf 2y agoThis is a good point. They may lose rights if they fail to distribute for a certain amount of time. They may revert to the filmmaker or someone else. This is a way to comply contractually.
- ValentineC 2y agoMy first thought upon reading the headline was that it's better that they put everything on YouTube, than delete more stuff like what they did to Cartoon Network's website: https://slate.com/technology/2024/08/david-zaslav-warner-bros-discovery-culture-deleting-movies-tv-shows.html https://slate.com/technology/2024/08/david-zaslav-warner-bro...
- rwmj 2y agoWhen Jeremy Irons was asked why he did Dungeons & Dragons (2000), he replied "Are you kidding? I'd just bought a castle, I had to pay for it somehow" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190374/trivia/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190374/trivia/)
- fullshark 2y agoMichael Caine's quote about Jaws 4 is similarly great: "I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
- canucker2016 2y agofrom the Hot To Trot Wikipedia page: "In an interview in 2011, Bobcat Goldthwait said that he got the script for Hot to Trot and wrote "Why would I do this?" on the cover, to which his manager responded by writing a dollar sign"
- falcor84 2y agoAs someone with more modest means, I'm wondering - was that just a quip, or is it really possible for rich people to buy property first, and then figure out how to pay for it? How do they finance it?
- InitialLastName 2y ago> How do they finance it? The same way most people do, with a mortgage. The difference is what a bank is willing to lend you if they see you have a significantly higher than average income. It's also possible he wasn't just talking about the purchase payment. Large, old, valuable buildings also often require very large upkeep bills.
- abofh 2y agoIt depends on levels of money. At musk levels, it's cheaper to borrow from your shares on margin, spend that, and never repay anything but interest - no financing involved except lending out your own assets. At multi-million illiquid, you're going to go to a bank, show them accounts and historic income, and because you're an actor with bursty income, they'll smooth out the line and decide if the loan you want is above it or below it. He likely had the means for the down payment and the assets for enough monthlies that the bank felt it was de-risked, but you can also do hard-money loans and similar if you have expectations of payment - but they tend to come with heavy duty strings. Which is to say - for musks, not like you or I, for the illiquid, very much the same process, but with money managers and the like doing the actual bank negotiation.
- bena 2y agoI love this. It's been ages since I've seen "Oh God" or "Hot to Trot". Not great movies, not genre or culture defining, but fine. These are movies I'd watch if they were on. I hope they do more. And I hope other distributors follow suit. Basically, I want Critters 1-3.
- canucker2016 2y agowikipedia page for "Hot to Trot", besides Bobcat Goldthwait, has Virginia Madsen, Dabney Coleman, and the voice of John Candy. Released in that dead zone known as late august, in 1988. 0, zero, null!!!, percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 22/100 on Metacritic. Nominated for 5 Razzies - of course, they didn't "win" any. Don't think I've ever seen it on TV.
- bena 2y agoWhen it was fairly recent. Maybe a year or two out of theaters
- jeffwask 2y agoThis is what I thought digital content would be two decades ago.
- chatmasta 2y agoI don’t know about officially sanctioned releases, but I feel like I’ve watched entire movies through YouTube shorts at this point… there’s a really simple grift that rockets to the top of the algorithm and also pushes people into a pipeline for other clips of the movie: 1. Clip a movie scene and crop it for vertical aspect ratio (maybe some AI is used here to choose the focus point of the scene) 2. Add royalty-free background music and possibly other tweaks like mirroring the video 3. Title it something generic that doesn’t acknowledge it’s a movie/show, like “College dropout beats Harvard Law grads to the job” for the scene from Suits (Note: for shorts, the title doesn’t matter if it’s algorithmically chosen to play next… in fact at this point the more relevant title is the optional link to a different short… the real title is barely visible) 4. Do not mention the name of the movie/show in the title or description There are hundreds of accounts producing these shorts on an industrial scale. It’s easy to see how the automation works and also why it’s successful. It’s clickbait (people want to comment or ask for the title, or correct the title to mention it’s actually from a movie); it’s addicting (it funnels people into watching more clips from the same movie… funny how YouTube knows to do that but not that it’s copyrighted, btw); it’s self-optimizing (if the algorithm doesn’t surface the next short, people go looking for it specifically); and of course, it’s automatable (everything from curation to editing can be automated, and just a sprinkle of AI is apparently enough to obfuscate the automation). What’s fascinating is that YouTube hasn’t stopped this. The shorts algorithm can obviously detect the similarity between clips from a movie, but the copyright/spam detection algorithm can’t detect the same.
- atVelocet 2y agoWhat i never understood: Why not use some kind of interlacing and randomly sort the lines. The result is a valid video file which could be uploaded to YouTube. Then deinterlace with a browser plugin and the random pattern used to scramble the lines. Same can be applied to the audio.
- chatmasta 2y agoNot sure I’m understanding you, but it sounds like you’re asking why not upload a video that’s scrambled until viewed with a browser plugin that knows how to unscramble it? That would be cool, but it won’t be very effective as a viral video if everyone needs to have a browser plugin installed :) The challenge here is to circumvent the copyright algorithms while still looking like a normal video to the user (who has no external tools installed). However, for things like hosting pirated streams or sharing content out-of-band, it would be interesting. It’s basically the a minimally lossless form of steganography.
- spelunker 2y agoOk but how am I going to watch the first three Critters films??
- vanderZwan 2y ago> Anyway, Waiting for Guffman still holds up, and you can watch it on YouTube, for free. On top of that it never was released outside of the US before! As a European fan of Spinal Tap I'm quite excited to finally be able to see this film. Also: no mention of The Mission, which is also in the list? That's quite a critically acclaimed one. Just look at these opening paragraphs from its wikipedia page: > The Mission is a 1986 British historical drama film about the experiences of a Jesuit missionary in 18th-century South America.[4] Directed by Roland Joffé and written by Robert Bolt, the film stars Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally, Aidan Quinn, Cherie Lunghi, and Liam Neeson. > The film premiered in competition at the 39th Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palme d'Or. At the 59th Academy Awards it was nominated for seven awards including Best Picture and Best Director, winning for Best Cinematography. The film has also been cited as one of the greatest religious films of all time, appearing in the Vatican film list's "Religion" section and being number one on the Church Times' Top 50 Religious Films list. Oh, and the score is by a certain Ennio Morricone. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IpNXw6Y05M&list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5hv69XiegDm6tQ&index=27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IpNXw6Y05M&list=PL7Eup7JXSc... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mission_(1986_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mission_(1986_film)
- xhkkffbf 2y agoCertainly "The Mission" is a great film. Absolutely top notch. And with one of Morricone's better scores.
- andybak 2y agoI've heard it referred to as "one of the greatest film scores ever written" and it's a defensible claim.
- tomaytotomato 2y agoI discovered the Mission through an Ennio Morricone playlist, and didn't regret it. Not a religious person but it made me aware of who the Jesuits were and read up on them. Truly a fascinating part of the Catholic Church, they're like crack Navy Seals in religious terms, or 10x engineers of the Vatican :) I sometimes program whilst listening to "Gabriel's Oboe" on repeat for hours and hours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OIna_nXFxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OIna_nXFxM
- georgeecollins 2y agoThis is a desperation move. Warner, like many other studios fed Netflix the content to make the service that is destroying them. Then a WB had a disastrous acquisition by ATT-- admittedly made worse by a Trump grudge that held it up for years. Then an acquisition by Discovery, that added very little to WB except bad management. Destroying the HBO brand, DC, etc. Why is this dumb? They get pennies for their assets today while they bolster the other tech giant that is going to kill them. Studios like WBD don't have the capital or the strategic vision to operate in this environment.
- croes 2y agoLast time I checked there was no age check on the horror movies, which is especially strange for access from Germany
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoThey do no longer remember who holds the IP but have copies laying about. So post them, if they do not get a strike by a ip owner- they might be actual yours?
- schnable 2y agoIt's not strange that they are attempting to monetize movies that don't generate subscriptions or VOD revenue. WB/Discovery doesn't have a free streaming service like Tubi, PlutoTV, FreeVee, etc. so why not YouTube? The CPMs are great.
- xhkkffbf 2y agoWhy are some great films mixed with some duds? This is classic Hollywood accounting. They sell N files for $M and then split the revenue evenly. The great film gets $M/N and so does every dud. In practice, the great film's revenues have already "earned out" any advances so that $M/N must be shared with outsiders. Often, the duds haven't made enough so the studio gets to keep all $M/N. I don't know that's what they're doing here. Certainly, they have enough data to accurately allocate revenues. But it's what's been done in the past.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoThe “Hollywood accounting” meme makes no sense. Anyone in the media production business can take 5 min to read the Wikipedia article on it (or use common sense) and learn that they should not accept compensation on terms completely controlled by the opposing party. If they do, then they had no negotiating power in the first place, and so had nothing to lose by accepting those terms (because they were not going to get a better offer such as more cash upfront).
- dark-star 2y agoWithin the last 2 or 3 months, I have noticed that a lot of old movies are popping up on my YouTube feed. This includes full movies from the 30s to the 90s, and some are even in other languages. They are being uploaded, often with a small watermark in the corner, and they are not taken down. I am rather curious as to why this is happening now (and happening across multiple countries, apparently) but I kinda like it.
- soupfordummies 2y agoThis is cool! I do get it, these movies are most likely basically "worthless" for WB at this point. Hell, I remember seeing Deathtrap and True Stories in the Wal-Mart $5 DVD bin 20 years ago. This is still better than letting them basically be completely lost/unavailable and the ad revenue makes it a positive cashflow proposition I bet.
- anothercoup 2y agoFor the same reason the guy wrote an article/ad about it. To make money.
- S_Bear 2y agoNow if only whoever owns the rights (Fox? Disney?) would follow suit and drop the old Fox TV catalog (Herman's Head. Whoops!, Parker Lewis Can't Lose) on youtube so I could rewatch the shows I loved as a kid, but never stream anywhere.
- kindatrue 2y agoThe problem might be music rights clearance if they used a lot of contemporary music from actual artists.
- extraduder_ire 2y agoHave you tried finding a pirated copy anywhere? I went through an ordeal trying to find the original 60s batman show online for someone, since most available versions were the versions edited down to fit the increased number of ads in the 80s. I am pretty sure what was syndicated and shown on TV here was the original 60s cut though, since we have far fewer ads than the US.
- blackoil 2y agoMany Indian movies are available on YouTube. Particularly old movies or dubbed from South Indian languages to Hindi. Some of them of 100s of millions of views. Considering home video market is more or less dead. YouTube is the best pay per view (via ads) available.
- genewitch 2y agoVOD not PPV
- pentagrama 2y agoYouTube playlist with the movies https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5hv69XiegDm6tQ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...
- Galatians4_16 2y agoCould be for market research. Whichever is the most popular, gets remade or whatever.
- daggersandscars 2y agoThey're not being dumped. Putting them on YT lets WB make passive money while maintaining control of their rights with little effort on their part. If WB makes a better deal down the road, they can hide or delete the movies from YT. This also makes some of the movies more valuable by revealing hidden demand. WB will see their YT stats for their films and see where future investments or licensing deals may pay off. A streaming company is disincentivized to tell the movie owner how the film is doing.
- quxbar 2y agoI've been using Youtube to re-discover a lot of fun movies from the 80s-00s that I never saw when I was a kid. It's quite nice to tune in and out while working.
- giancarlostoro 2y agoAnything from before the 1980s should just be on YouTube, its easy cash for them on films that are sitting idle otherwise. Anything they aren't licensing to anyone anywhere should just be on YouTube. Or any sort of streaming platform that has sane ads, and anyone can see. It is really sad to me there's no genuine YouTube competitor.
- bongodongobob 2y ago"you should just do X" generally means you don't have the full picture. You're completely disregarding all the union stuff that needs to be considered. You're forgetting all the little guys that make movies happen. Yeah the directors and actors probably don't care, but the other 100s of other people involved in making films probably do. Edit: You're right. Just disregard any laws and contracts in place. HN knows best. It must be that easy.
- t-writescode 2y agoEarly US copyright was something like 20 years + 20 years if they were still alive. Under that, everything before 1985 would be free of copyright already. I think the majority of Americans would greatly prefer that model; but, The Mouse had other plans and has extended copyright to approx 100 years.
- bongodongobob 2y agoI'm not saying that shouldn't change. But you're right! Just change copyright law! Easy. Brilliant.
- greiskul 2y agoApparently it was super easy to change copyright law to extend it over and over again.
- giancarlostoro 2y agoAre the little guys receiving royalties from these movies decades later? I recall instances where actors paid some of the little guys out of their own pocket to keep movies going, Deadpool is an example of this.
- brudgers 2y agoWhy? My guess is the data Youtube Analytics makes available and the potential for making something a cult classic. To boot, if there’s no revenue, there’s no need to pay creative people. Indeed, if it boosts expenses under Hollywood accounting practices, those expenses might offset other income that would otherwise be owed to artists and their estates.
- penjelly 2y agopeople talking about ad revenue... It feels more like a reputational play, ie: throw some free movies out with the WBD logo, more people recognize the brand strength of WBD, then subscribe to Max. Though the selection is small and the movies don't look very good at a glance..
- pinebox 2y agoI imagine the selection seems random because these are films that WB has the most favorable contracts for -- So there is no need for them to track number of streams so they can send some director or production company penny checks every month, etc.
- jasoncartwright 2y agoThere is an increasing amount of UK TV uploaded to YouTube from whoever owns the rights. Have seen The Bill (26 seasons) and pretty much all of Gordon Ramsey's work recently (including a 8hr entire season video). ITV appears to have even created the brand "Our Stories" for their YouTube fly on the wall telly content. Much of this not-fantastic-quality TV could probably be easily found on YouTube even without the rights holder being involved anyway - so better they get paid?
- jsnell 2y agoAlso 18 seasons of Taskmaster, which at least I think is fantastic quality.
- jasoncartwright 2y agoJust watched one for the first time today! You are correct.
- esskay 2y agoChannel 4's been doing it too, in fact absolutely loads of their shows are on YouTube now and they do it as a weekly release, so for example last week they posted the first episode of "Celebrity Hunted" season 6, and then a week later episode 2, etc. Take a look at their playlists to see what I mean, tons of stuff: https://www.youtube.com/@Channel4/playlists https://www.youtube.com/@Channel4/playlists They've also got other channels, eg you can watych most of grand designs over here: https://www.youtube.com/@Channel4Homes/playlists https://www.youtube.com/@Channel4Homes/playlists Guessing they realised its more profitable to use someone elses bandwidth and run ads.
- n0rdy 2y agoSince those are mostly old movies, my immediate thought was: "maybe it's a new creative way to create a new income stream for hard-to-sell-otherwise assets?". If a decent enough number of users watch them, it could bring some cash to the publisher, couldn't it?
- kuringganteng 2y ago[dead]
- gymbeaux 2y agoBecause they need all the money they can get, they are a sinking ship. Next question.
- iancmceachern 2y agoCheck out Peroscope films. They take public domain footage, mostly us government stuff, and release it and claim copyright over it. I took some of their public domain footage and put it on YouTube and they freaked out. Through logic and reason I was able to get them to admit they have no copyright right, as they were initially claiming. But they did have the YouTube terms of service. So, back to this. If they had public domain stuff they wanted to protect, this is another less obvious way to do it.
- m_ppp 2y agoThat's interesting, how did you find these guys?
- iancmceachern 2y agoThey found me. I found public domain old black and white military training videos on a public resource on the internet and put them in YouTube. Then they did the YouTube strike thing and I called them and the guy was a total jerk on the phone. Like Jerry McGuire or that other guy Tom Cruise played in Tropic Thunder.
- m_ppp 2y agoThey put a strike on you because they had the film themselves and were claiming copyright? Were you putting up those films just as a public good service or was it for something else?
- iancmceachern 2y agoI was putting them up in good faith as a public service. Yes, they did. But when I pointed out that they didn't in fact own the copyright they highlighted this detail about the youtube terms if service, so I still had to take the video down, not because it violated copyright, but because it violated the YouTube terms of service.
- 2y ago
- Gshaheen 2y agoA friendly reminder that your local library has a ton of free online access to news sites, movies, and ebooks! Libraries are amazing! Support them!
- kouru225 2y agoThe wind and the lion! Took me years to find a digital copy of that movie about 7 years ago
- dehrmann 2y agoThere just isn't much value in most old films. There are a handful of standouts per year, and anything in a major franchise, but the demand for everything else is low, so you might as well make it as easy to find as possible and get what money you can from it.
- personalityson 2y agoAll of Tarkovsky is on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hBLv-HLEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hBLv-HLEc
- georgeecollins 2y agoIt's been discussed here before but there are amazingly good soviet films available on YouTube.
- mrandish 2y agoThere was a time fairly early in Netflix's streaming era when all the studios were just dumping their old back catalogs on Netflix to get some revenue from 'dead content' that I thought "Wow, someday soon pretty much all the old content will just be available on a central streaming service. The future will be good." Then the stock market started inflating the value of streamers because of ARR projections and studios adopted a gold rush mentality, pulled back all their content and each tried to launch their own service. Of course, this quickly fragmented the streaming market as few consumers would subscribe to more than one or two services at a time. As stock valuations dropped back to reality, the server plus bandwidth costs started piling up and the also-ran streaming services became break-even boat anchors for most studios. Now we're left with the cultural 'worst of all worlds'. A dozen inaccessible walled gardens each neglected by their owners and no easy, central way to find and watch an old, low-value film.
- Retric 2y agoMost things are on Amazon if you’re willing to pay for them individually. It’s more buffet style streaming services that splintered. Per movie may seem expensive, but at the low end of hours per month watch time streaming services are a bad deal.
- babypuncher 2y agoI don't like buying DRM-encumbered digital copies. I'm OK with streaming subscriptions because their catalogues are fundamentally ephemeral, but if I buy a movie I want to know I can keep it forever, even if the platform I bought it from disappears entirely. To that end, I only buy physical media that can be copied and have its DRM removed. On the plus side, Blu-Ray turns 20 next year and still provides better image quality than your typical 1080p stream.
- Retric 2y agoI get you, but to be clear I was referring to renting movies rather than purchasing them. It’s not a service I use, but it’s surprisingly close to the anything anywhere anytime ideal.
- indigodaddy 2y agoEven though the article says this initiative is not part of YouTube Movies/Premium, assumedly if one does have YT Premium/Music, then these movies should be ad-free, correct?
- animanoir 2y ago[dead]
- dade_ 2y agoGood luck getting kids to watch them. Kids today have a hate on for movies or TV older than themselves. It makes sense since there has only been a handful of great movies in the last 20 years. Dumping B grade and lower stuff on YouTube is only going to reinforce the idea. It’s hard to believe how far Hollywood has fallen. I haven’t paid much attention to trailers in years.
- bsimpson 2y agoI work at Google, and I didn't even know that there are good movies you can watch for free with a YT Premium subscription until I saw this article: https://www.youtube.com/feed/storefront https://www.youtube.com/feed/storefront Includes Roger Rabbit, Billy Madison, Good Will Hunting, Wayne's World, Mars Attacks, Grumpy Old Men, Osmosis Jones, the 90s TMNT movie…
- bsimpson 2y agoNow do Coyote v. ACME! (It was a Roger Rabbit-style live action + cartoon character blend, based on an awesome newspaper parody, that was completely created, received rave reviews, and then shitcanned by the befuddling new accounting practices of Warner Bros. Discovery.)
- qingcharles 2y agoIf Trump signed an EO to release this I might excuse a couple of his other ones.
- whycome 2y agoSony has this thing they call Bravia Core (which they no renamed to Sony Pictures Core) and as far as I can tell, it’s restricted to Bravia TVs (okay also PlayStations and an Xperia phone apparently). You get a certain number of credits when you buy a tv I guess. And then I don’t think you can even buy more. I get that it’s Sony trying to monetize their content in a way (though I’m not sure it really incentivizes the TV purchase if people don’t really know about it…) but it seems like a step in the wrong direction if other studios are looking to make their catalogs more accessible. The killer feature for the Sony service though is that it’s super high bandwidth and really high quality stream. (But, in testing it, it seems some of their tv processor hardware or memory limits can’t handle the load). It’s like the most bizarre version of a walled garden. At least using YouTube kind of makes it accessible to more people. And YouTube does have some high bitrate options
- propter_hoc 2y agoOh neat, I have that on my new TV and I never tried it out. Thanks for letting me know about it!
- aurizon 2y agoAll paid for, near zero cost to distribute, small crumbs of revenue, but from enough crumbs - a loaf can be made, and they have a lot of crumbs. I have poked around and watched a few and I liked them. Good for you WB = adapt and prosper
- xchip 2y agoTL;DR: because they dont have a streaming service
- zfg 2y agoThey own HBO and HBO Max.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> TL;DR: because they dont have a streaming service They have two major streaming services (which they originally planned to merge), Discovery+ and MAX (formerly HBO Max).
- firebirdn99 2y agobecause no one watches them, so better be available, and in peoples minds, grab attention (which is the #1 commodity in the world) than fall to obscurity
- tonymet 2y agoThey are not old they are classics
- leipie 2y agoMaybe they are republishing the movies in the cheapest way to keep the rights?
- HenryBemis 2y agoI will go ahead and say that some of these movies were given 'for free' some years ago. In some countries, Sunday newspapers and/or magazines would come with a 'free' DVD. But they were never giving away the blockbusters, they would give away good movies, with good cast (e.g. Mission - De Niro). So there are so many (hundreds? thousands?) of DVDs/copies floating out there, to the point that nobody would pay a fee to watch them. I had a collection of those 'free' DVDs that came in newspapers/magazines. Some years back I 'ripped' them all (kept photos of the album with the DVDs as proof of ownership) and threw away (responsibly) hundreds of DVD disks. I have never watched any of them. I do not believe that all these "views" listed are real.. "True stories", 29k views in 6 days?? Really?? I think people search for "<title> full movie" and click on anything that comes up, as they search for some blockbuster/pirated movie. And/or some people will click, use their InternetDownloadManager (or similar), download the 1080, save it, and never watch it.
- kiwiguy1 2y agoI think this is a play on testing how the DRM of their catalog looks like. Looking through my mcn cms they have all the applicable claims on the content so they are possibly testing how many infringing videos are on YouTube as well as using all this content as a content funnel
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- johnea 2y agoIs it even a "release" when it's on youboob? Will they allow downoad? Will they enforce ads and popups in order to view these movies? It's more like they gave the licensess to goggle than actually "releasing" the movies...
- etempleton 2y agoI think it does two things: 1. It puts these otherwise worthless movies to work and earns some ad revenue even if it is peanuts 2. There is always the chance a clip goes inexplicably viral on social and suddenly finds new relevance to the point that someone does want to pay money for it.
- morphle 2y agoI watched one of these movies after reading this discussion on HN. It was blocked halfway thru the movie "not available in this region" (European IP address).
- jakeogh 2y agoIf we stopped watching, they would pay us to watch. Holly wood casts spells.
- interludead 2y agoI think, for viewers, it's a win. Free movies, no DRM, and no region locks? But it's ironic that YouTube is now offering a more open and accessible archive than most official streaming services
- hawski 2y agoAt the moment those are region locked.
- aucisson_masque 2y agoI think it's pretty obvious. They think it's going to makes more money with YouTube advertisement than the traditional copy selling.
- natemup 2y agoQuite nice that they, unlike the free ones on the "Youtube Movies" channel, can be downloaded by YouTube Premium users without any hassle.
- scott_s 2y agoMurder in the First is one of them, and it is a long favorite of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X42yOL5Ah4E&list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5hv69XiegDm6tQ&index=16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X42yOL5Ah4E&list=PL7Eup7JXSc... It has the best performance I've ever seen by Kevin Bacon, and a solid performance from Christian Slater. Gary Oldman is a solid villian. R. L. Emery does his usual thing, but he's really good at that usual thing. I think about lines and ideas from it frequently. Granted, this is partly because the movie came out when I was 15 and I watched it a formative age with friends. But I've also watched it recently, and I think it holds up.
- lipitic 2y agoFor those who are interested, Mosfilm has been uploading a bunch of Russian movies to YouTube for a long time. You can watch Tarkovsky's movies, for example. And one of my personal favorites - Kin-Dza-Dza! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYHv8eJrW2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYHv8eJrW2Y
- neves 2y agoVery nice. Unfortunately no Brazilian Portuguese subtitles.
- tveyben 2y agoGreat was my first thought - except that I am met with “the uploader have not made this video available on your country” (Denmark). So no value for me…
- nusl 2y ago""" 33 unavailable videos are hidden No videos in this playlist yet """
- ramon156 2y agobeat me to it, in mere seconds
- VagabundoP 2y agoyup geolocked. :(
- christkv 2y agoAaaaand it's gone.
- worik 2y agoNot in New Zealand > The uploader has not made this video available in your country
- mung 2y agoyep. dickheads.
- strobe 2y agolooks like they already removed all of those. I just opened saved playlist and found that non videos available.