Fewer movies are released with each new format. Does it matter?
Fewer movies are released with each successive format that comes out, from DVDs to Blu-rays and onwards. Consider that fact alongside the hundreds of movies released by Hollywood every year, let alone the rest of the world’s cinematic output and the infinite capacity for digital releases. As we continually hear about the death of physical media, does it matter that fewer movies are being made available in modern formats with new scans? We believe it does because it is our opportunity to preserve images of a world that is rapidly changing and disappearing before us. It might be a sad miracle that our modern technology and industries resulted in both the means to preserve our world on film and make it necessary for us to do so.
Number of movies released on current formats
Consider one source that lists the total numbers of movies released on each modern format, as of February 2023, which shows the following:
DVD (Combined Standards and Made-on-Demand (MOD)): 294,044 movies released
Blu-ray (Combined Standards and MOD): 39,289 movies released
4K Ultra HD (Only Standards available): 1,272 movies released
Consider a visual take on these numbers
Can you see the tiny sliver of green? Probably not. That’s the number of movies that have been released in the current highest quality format. 4k Ultra HD emerged in the 2010s, so it’s not a new format.
Meanwhile, Blu-rays have been on the market since the 2000s, yet there are still a disproportionate number of movies only available on DVD. Even if you remove DVDs from the equation, there’s still a huge gap to consider.
And this doesn’t take into account the number of movies or versions of movies only available on LaserDisc or VHS.
The number of movies released on Blu-ray vs Ultra HD.
The best available format (Ultra HD) only makes up 3% of the films available on Blu-ray, and it is common for Ultra HDs to be released in combination with a Blu-ray or DVD. Of that 3%, a good percentage of them are movies from companies like Vinegar Syndrome and Severin, which may not be the all-time classics you would expect to get this high-quality treatment.
How many movies are there?
How does DVDs’ nearly 300,000 movies released hold up against the number of movies there are?
The most common estimate I could find was about 500,000 movies released, but with some digging, that’s the number of movies released theatrically as of 2022, while the actual number of movies would be closer to 4 million, taking into account movies that are straight-to-DVD, online-only, made for TV, etc.
This means that just the number of movies that have ever been released, not even those that are actually widely available, is still only a fraction of the number of movies that have ever been made. Granted, a lot of movies are not great and don’t necessarily need to be revisited, but who’s to say what movies are worth preserving? It’s certainly not a question of quality or even popularity that necessarily means a movie will or won’t be available on a successive format (though it certainly helps). Some important movies, like the films of Mario Bava or Dawn of the Dead, are restricted and unlikely to be widely available in North America anytime soon because of simple greed on the part of the current rights holders.
Movies may disappear…
This problem started a long time ago; nearly half of all silent films are believed to be lost forever. Preserving our film history is important for cultural reasons, so that we can understand what we’ve done and continue to build on the art form, yet major studios haven’t always been aligned with this goal. It can be taken for granted that because a movie has already been released on DVD that it can then just be re-released on DVD or another format, but a myriad of practical, legal, and economic reasons can prevent that. More and more, movies go out of print when their last print run sells out. Movies that were on Amazon for $20 can immediately fetch over $100 on third-party reseller markets like eBay once a movie is out of print.
In order for a movie to be truly preserved, the original camera negative (OCN) should be preserved. This is costly, and both film and digital formats are notoriously fragile mediums, prone to making themselves obsolete over time through their fragile natures. The reason you want to keep the OCN is to provide the opportunity to re-scan the image in the best format available at any given time. Any movie scanned during the days of the DVD were scanned with inferior quality technology. We now have 4K scans as a standard, and 8K is an option, even if it will be scaled down. With a strong, respectful restoration, it’s now possible to see these images in the best way possible since their initial run. However, it’s expensive to scan and restore any movie, but a neglected movie will often need even more work. The
There is no guarantee that our current technology will forever remain relevant, but some movies are only being made available in the 2020s after decades of being nearly unavailable. Even relatively popular boutique releases might only sell a few thousand copies, so many of these movies will become rare again when they go out of print.
…but the images remain
But again, does this matter? Consider what these movies are, beyond the genre tropes, questionable depictions, and whatever else you might think about movies, love them or hate them.
Consider the moving images we have of humans from the 20th and 21st centuries, most of whom are now gone and all of whom are older, along with our footage of a world that is at risk of changing forever before this generation’s very eyes because of climate change. We have footage of cities before corporate takeovers, glaciers in their full glory, and animals that have already or will go extinct. It’s important to consider how to handle, preserve, and honour these images that we captured of the world as it was for so long before the effects of the Anthropocene. Nature documentaries like the Planet Earth series are not an eternal statement. They are a moment in time, and our future footage will not look the same.
Written by Matthew Long
Edited by APT Editing