Warner Premiere is a label that has won itself few friends in some quarters. It is, after all, the part of the company that decided it’d be a cracking idea to make sequels to The Lost Boys. Warner Premiere also pumped out Return To House On Haunted Hill, Free Willy: Escape From Pirate’s Cove (really) and Ace Ventura Jr: Pet Detective. It’s the kind of label that’d be easy to dismiss.
However, keep looking. It was also the home that Warner Bros eventually gave to the cruelly overlooked Trick ‘r Treat (a disc really, really worth picking up). And then there’s the small matter of the animated DC movies, such as Superman: Doomsday, Superman Vs The Elite, Batman: Under The Red Hood and Batman: Gotham Knight.
Warner Bros has announced, though, that Warner Premiere is no more. Talking to The Wrap, the studio said that “given the continuing decline in the direct-to-video film market and shifting business models in the production of digital series, the decision was made to close Warner Premiere”.
It’ll finish up the movies that it’s current doing, and then its ongoing work – presumably including more animated work – will fold in to other areas of the Warner Bros business.
It’s an indicator that the joys of straight-to-DVD are under threat, though. New distribution models, particularly on-demand, don’t seem to be as tangible outlets to cheap and cheerful productions at the moment. We wait and see if others will follow Warner’s lead…
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