Last week, Lance Berry brought word of a death in the DVD rental market. Today, I write of a renaissance in the sales market, at least for “catalog” buyers like me.

Since its introduction in 1997, the major studios have used the DVD format to shore up their bottom lines. The cash cow, which mooed to the tune of $14.4 billion in sales in 2007, is yielding thinner milk these days; revenues are expected to fall to $12.8 billion this year, according to statistics published in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. What’s responsible for the drop?

Me. Back in the day, I couldn’t buy the damn things fast enough. I had three cabinets custom-built to hold them all and have filled them, and I’ve pretty much filled all the nooks and crannies within the cabinets too. (A man needs a special place to house The Bloody Pit of Horror and Dracula vs. Frankenstein.) But my buying has tapered off. I’m meh on Blu-Ray; I’ve seen it, it’s pretty, it pretty much offers the same hits I’ve purchased and repurchased (and repurchased again) in every prior format, and I’m pretty sure it’s the end of the line before everything goes online, which means I can dismantle the cabinets and sell their contents as movie-themed coasters to pay for our baby’s college education. Oh, yes, our little girl — she’s another big-ticket item to outgo our income on.

Leave it to Warner Bros. to figure out a way to welcome me back into the fold. It was the first studio to really capitalize on the format — the first five titles I bought were all WB — and anyone who enjoys movies older than about 2004 owes a tip of the hat to its senior vice president of theatrical catalog marketing, George Feltenstein. Under his direction the studio has done a fantastic job putting out full-to-bursting collections focused on stars (Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum, etc.), themes (its “Cult Camp Classics” line), and even playwrights (a Tennessee Williams box set, from 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire to 1964’s The Night of the Iguana, is a favorite). I’m eager to dip into its third “pre-Code” set, which concentrates on the envelope-pushing career of director William Wellman before content standards were imposed (1933’s Wild Boys of the Road is an unsung Depression-era classic). But over the past year, even WB, whose trailblazing inspired other studios to open their doors, seemed sluggish and unresponsive. I can understand their beating the marketing drum for new and improved 70th anniversary editions of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz this year, but there is more to movie life than Scarlett and Dorothy. “Frankly, my dear …” (more…)