They may have to wait for whatever contracts Shout signed with Amazon to end before they can move anything over to the Gizmoplex.
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The Volume 39 DVD set of MST3K has a disc called Satellite Dishes that has the host segments from the unreleased episodes.
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I read many comments about āThis person got a million dollars, I want that too.ā If itās a private sale do you really need to disclose the price? Also, canāt you try to buy the right to the movie using anyone? I expect someone with the last name Hodgson would be turned down, but what if some janitor came into the money then gifted it to their benefactor? Sort of like in the movie Hail Ceasar the unmarried actress made plans to adopt her own child to avoid a scandal. If different people are used then only doing research would reveal the scheme, well before you suddenly had the rights to movies. That can be delayed by releasing them slowly.
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I suspect some some of these obscure film rights-holders might run in similar circles. I know Wade Williams and Susan Hart are friends, heās talked about that before. So word would probably get around.
Any contract signed would have to mention its being licensed for for MST3K. So I donāt think a deceptive workaround would work.
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That, and this would be public crowdfunding centered on the idea that āsince we canāt get the rights, letās gather up a big pile Oā money to sweeten the deal.ā Hmm, I kinda, sorta think theyād get wind of it.
āPst, MSTies are gathering, and oodles of dough could be ours!ā
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Everyone knows Kickstarters never work. No, waitā¦
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Nah. See we incorporate with the name Reedy Creek*.
Then we can get all of the funding in place and make offers on the rights for the movies we need back.
No one realises that Reedy Creek is actually a shell company. We get all of the Godzilla movies back again. Bobās your uncle!
*Extra bonus points for you if you know where Reedy Creek comes from. 
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No, Bob was my dad. His brother Carl was my uncle. (Seriously)
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Yeah, the issue is that as a Kickstarter, both the initial amount requested, and the total amount raised are public knowledge. And a lot can be inferred from that.
If they ran a Kickstarter for just one movie/episode, then the pledge goal would have to be enough to cover the licensing costs, after other costs, so then other rightsholders would have an extra data point as to how much THEY can request.
But say they instead do a Kickstarter of, say, 4 films for $1 million total. That way we donāt know the exact amount paid for any one of those films. However, one could infer the average of $250,000, and any of the 4 rightsholder that got paid less than that is going to be PISSED.
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Yeah, youāre not going to trick Toho. Godzilla is their bread and butter and they are fiercely protective of the rights these days. Any contract would specify in excruciating detail how you could use the films (including - no doubt - a āno cutsā rule) and probably give them final approval on anything you release.
EDIT: By the way, the current US licensee for Showa Era Godzilla is Janus Films / The Criterion Collection. Youād have to beat them on the price/prestige axis when it comes up for renewal for Toho to not just laugh you out of the room.
Iām going to guess Gamera was more gettable because Daiei went out of business forever ago and either Kadokawa (who bought the remains of Daiei) is less protective or the US dub rights are out of their control.
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I think Netflix streaming used to work like they would have to own a bunch of copies of a DVD and sit on them so it would be like streaming folks were renting the individual DVD at a distance.
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Netflix started as a DVD mail delivery serviceā¦ you would specify a āqueueā of things you wanted to watch and they would send them to you one at a time.
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The way it started was they had streaming rights to almost nothing. I remember scrolling through things like Criss Angel: Mindfreak and Lady Death: The Movie, looking for anything to watch.
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One or more at a time. I was on the 2x plan for a long time. Much to most peopleās surprise, they still operate the DVD by mail service. They just spun it off into a subsidiary called DVD.com a few years ago.
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Then Dish Network bought out Blockbuster and tried to be a competitor in the mail-order DVD rental business. I was a Dish subscriber and had an active queue right up until they said āNope, weāre out. Keep whatever you have.ā
And thatās why to this day I still have a DVD of The Muppet Movie in a Blockbuster Tyvek sleeve sitting on my desk.
(Well ā¦ thatās why I have it at all. Itās only on my desk because Iām lazy and dislike change.)
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In the original, saner conception, copyright would have expired at 20 years (or 40 years, if the owners renewed). Nearly everything the original run did would be PD by now. Except for some guys at
** Well, okay, more likely they were on Buena Vista Blvd.
Is it unique? I know that thereās a Criterion of, e.g., Carnival of Souls. Hmmm, no Marooned, which seems like a potential candidateā¦
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Regarding Netflix, they started out mailing DVDs, and the streaming service started as a free bonus to that service, which included titles they explicitly licensed for streaming.
Two services have tried the āstream a DVD to you,ā called Zediva and VidAngel, and both got shut down by copyright lawsuits.
As to the history of copyright, the original terms in the US were 14 years + an optional 14 year extension. In 1831, this was changed to 28 yrs + 14 yr renewal, then in 1909 to 28 yr + 28 yr renewal. In 1976, it was changed to the life of the author + 50 yrs, or 75 yrs for āwork for hireā corporate works works, which films are. Anything still in copyright got their terms changed to the new rules. In 1998 this was retroactively extended to life + 75 yrs, or for corporate works 120 years after creation, or 95 years after publication.
Considering sound film took off in 1927, the shortest copyright any film MST3K would cover wouldāve been 28 years, assuming the filmmakers had properly registered for copyright and marked their work as copyright protected (Night of the Living Dead was instant public domain because they forgot to put the copyright notice on the title card), and then didnāt renew. However, due to copyright term retroactive changes and extensions, only works published 95+ years ago are falling out of copyright. For example, works from 1926 entered public domain January 1, 2022. We havenāt even hit the era of the earliest sound filmsā copyright terms expiring.
Eventually, all of the films covered by classic MST3K will fall into public domain, but considering that Future War was released in 1997, to be riffed a mere 2 years later, it will take until 2093 until all those films are in the public domain.
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Huh. I didnāt know MST3K did that one. Letās modify it to something like āalmost unique distinctionā or āis in the rarefied space of beingā.
Although I just double checked and MST3K never did it. Mike did a commentary track for a home video release and RiffTrax did it. So Godzilla is still unique, I think.
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Thanks Darth Mikey and Sonny Bonoā¦
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