The Columbia Deal

A look at some of the numerous meetings that we undertook in order to issue 8mm films to our customers.

Contracts & Rights Chapter 28

The tale of the “Columbia” deal was one of our most spectacular, prior to the Disney contract, however it’s also one of our most heartbreaking! There had been long and sometimes difficult negotiations to get the deal put together from the very start. However as the deal and a contract began to look promising we were like children in a ‘cookie store’ as Derek cherry picked the titles that would eventually include ‘Jason and the Argonauts’; 1963, ‘The Jolson Story’; 1946, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977: ‘First Men in the Moon’; 1964, ‘Papillon’; 1973, ‘Jolson Sings Again’; 1949 and ‘Oliver!’; 1968.  Larry Parks as Jolson was far more popular than I’d expected and we’d sold several print runs, while Harryhausen’s 1963 fantasy was thrilling everyone who saw it (the Eastman color by Pathe fairly sparkled). The third release, was ‘Close Encounters’ which when we received the test print turned ou to be ‘The Special Edition’ and when we queried this we were told this was the only version available for master material in the UK… so we decided to go go ahead with with this second cut. Spielberg’s  Science Fiction drama was on course to be a sure fire winner, with the first print order of around 20 sold even before the shrink wrapped boxes had had time to cool. It had been our plan to release this film first, but grading problems had delayed it time and again, had the negative been spot on we may have sold 80 or more by this time.  Derek was preparing the order for the master material for the Jolson sequel when we had a phone call from Columbia, telling us to halt all operations and calling us in for an urgent meeting. It would seem that our contact was “very annoyed” following a number of calls from “Collectors” asking about future releases and specific titles. It may not seem a great deal to you or ourselves, but our female contact at Columbia was absolutely bloody furious and after giving Derek the third degree had decided to end the contract then and there, giving us the order to return all negatives and sound masters, as well as any unsold 8mm prints! Luckily we had only had box labels for Jason printed and were able to cancel the remainder, or the loss would have been a great deal more expensive.

Derek had already decided on some of the titles for a second contract, ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’, ‘Mysterious Island’ and ‘Mackenna’s Gold’ are the only ones I recall, I know he wanted to include a Hammer Horror, of which Columbia had a number ‘The Gorgon’, ‘Revenge of Frankenstein’, ‘The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb’, ‘The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll’, ‘Terror of The Tongs’ and the psychological thriller ‘Fanatic’, which were all filmed in colour. There was also ‘The Damned’, ‘Maniac’, ‘The Stranglers of Bombay’ and ‘Taste of Fear’, but as these were shot in black and white I doubt he would hae gone in that direction. It was an extensive catalogue to chose from, you can’t begin to imagine how devistated we were. It was the loss of ‘Close Encounters’ that was a major factor on us deciding to issue 20th Century Fox’s ‘Cocoon’, which although sold well enough, wasn’t really big enough to fill the gap left empty by the colossal loss of ‘Close Encounters’.    

…. to be continued.