[bbatha]

The theatrical releases were probably a waste but these movies made their money on vhs and dvd sales. However, direct to dvd was considered a bargain bin only movie without prestige and theater appearances were and are required for Oscar contention so even then theater releases did make some economic sense.

On paper, a lot of these movies should have moved to direct to streaming but haven’t for whatever reason.

[HlessClaudesman]

Yeah it's surprising how shallow the back catalogues of all the streaming services are. Currently they don't seem to be incentivised to acquire the rights to older content, because the flashy new stuff is what reels in the flashy new customers.

Would there be demand for a streaming service to host older quality content under a new umbrella, or maybe just a retro focused offshoot of an existing streaming service? Kind of like one of those old timey video stores that specialised in rare cult classics.