20th Century Fox used to be one of the most respected film studios in the business. Its catalog of films is virtually legendary: Miracle on 34th Street (the 1947 version, not the 1994 remake), The Day the Earth Stood Still (the 1951 classic, not the crappy remake from last year), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, the original Planet of the Apes film series, Young Frankenstein, the Star Wars films, the Alien series, The Princess Bride, Wall Street, Home Alone, Die Hard, and dozens of others.

In 2008, however, it went from a respected studio to one big joke, thanks to the fact that starting at the end of ‘07 and continuing through all of ‘08, the majority of the films it released either barely broke even or were outright box-office flops (Space Chimps, Max Payne, Australia, Meet Dave, The Rocker, and City of Ember, among others). While other studios were turning out blockbusters that earned $100 million like clockwork, Fox was fumbling the ball over and over again. For instance, it released The X-Files: I Want to Believe in the second week of The Dark Knight’s phenomenal run last summer, not to mention about ten years after anyone — even hard-core Files fans — could bring themselves to care; it interfered with the production of the Vin Diesel vehicle Babylon A.D., which, admittedly, would have probably failed no matter what; and it spurred fanboy wrath by suing Warner Bros. for profits from Watchmen, profits that Fox arguably didn’t deserve.

Now it’s reached a new low by revealing that from now on all extras — commentaries, background features, deleted scenes, etc. — on DVDs of its films won’t be included on any discs designed for rental purposes. This means that if you rent your DVDs from Blockbuster or some other store or service (possibly Netflix — more on that in a second), you won’t have the option to decide if you like the extras enough to later buy the DVD — you’ll be forced to buy them from stores, sight unseen, and have to hope that the extras are special enough to warrant the purchase of the disc, regardless of how you feel about the film.

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