Following the success of the MGM features it didn’t take long for Derek to persuade Twentieth Century Fox, that the time was right for them to allow us to issue full length features. ‘The Sound of Music’, 1965, was the one and only choice for us to begin with and with us offering our customers the option of full length or an abridged 3 x 600′, we found that we had difficulty in keeping up with the orders. Over the next few years we issued ‘Star Wars’, 1977; ‘Romancing the Stone’, 1984; ‘Hello, Dolly!’, 1969; ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’, 1953; ‘Cocoon’, 1985; ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’, 1954; ‘Carousel’, 1956; ‘Alien’, 1979; ‘Aliens’, 1986; ‘The King and I’, 1956; ‘The Abyss’, 1989; ‘Die Hard’, 1988; ‘Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines’, 1965; ‘Commando’, 1985; ‘Fantasic Voyage’, 1966; ‘Die Hard II: Die Harder’, 1990; ‘Die Hard With A Vengeance’, 1995; ‘Predator’, 1987; ‘Speed’ 1994 and ‘Independence Day’, 1996. It was this final release that brought home to us the problems that lay ahead! Fox no longer had a 35mm negative for us to use to produce our 16mm reduction neg, as they were beginning to use digital means to store their product and cut costs, and we finally had to agree to use a nearly new 35mm print. Needless to say people noticed the drop (very slight drop) in quality and the sales were decidedly slow, on what should have been a mega blockbuster. ‘The Robe’, ‘How To Marry a Millionaire’ and ‘The Seven Year Itch’ which had been announced and appeared in various catalogues, were never issued, due to numerous problems that we never overcame. Many years following Derek’s death there was a phone call from Fox offering us ‘Master and Commander’, 2003…. it was the most problematic release that I’d ever encountered and we lost a great deal of money during its production.
…. to be continued.
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