Displaying items by tag: Disney signs physical media production deal with Sony

Regarding the Disney/Sony physical media news that we broke this morning on The Digital Bits (link here), we’ve learned the following additional information from our industry sources:

• Once again, we’ve confirmed that Disney is indeed in the process of transitioning to a licensed physical media distribution model via an agreement with Sony Entertainment.

• As part of this deal, Sony will market, sell, and distribute new Disney releases plus catalog titles on physical media (4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, etc.) to consumers through retailers and distributors in the U.S. and Canada.

• This shift is consistent with other strategies that Disney is working to implement company-wide, as exemplified by the company’s recent transitions in other markets.

• Per usual, Disney regularly evaluates their approach to the physical media market as the home entertainment business and industry at large continue to rapidly evolve alongside consumer behavior.

This update is continued below the break... [Read on here...]

There are some significant developments happening within the home video industry of late, developments that I’ve been spending a lot of time investigating and really digging into these past few weeks here at The Digital Bits.

And I can now confidently report that one of them is this:

Disney and Sony have just inked a major deal for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to take over all of Disney’s physical media production going forward.

This means that Sony will handle and oversee the actual authoring and compression of discs, that they’ll work with the replicators and packaging vendors, and that they’ll oversee the titles as they go out to the distributors and on to retailers.

I first received word of this deal about two weeks ago, apparently within twenty-four hours of the ink drying, and I’ve now confirmed it with multiple independent sources within the industry—people that I trust and have known and worked with for many years.

This deal makes sense for Disney for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Sony is far more efficient and cost effective at producing their discs, whereas Disney’s physical media operation has been subject to no small amount of internal/organizational turmoil recently. [Read on here...]