Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

History

Warner Bros. entered the home video business in 1979, becoming the second major Hollywood studio to do so after Twentieth Century-Fox. That year, the newly formed Warner Home Video—originally launched as WCI Home Video in 1978—released its first twenty films in the United States on Betamax and VHS cassettes. The company quickly added more titles through 1979 and 1980. Before releasing its own discs, Warner Bros. licensed its films to MCA DiscoVision and RCA's SelectaVision videodisc formats, letting those companies market and distribute the movies under their own labels. By 1985, Warner was putting out material under its own name in both formats. The concept of the DVD traces back to 1986, when Warner president Warren Lieberfarb pushed for a five-inch optical disc to hold movies, inspired by the CD's success in music. In Australia and New Zealand, Warner Home Video titles are distributed and manufactured by Roadshow Home Video, due to the film partnership with Village Roadshow.

During the early 1980s, Warner Home Video tried a rental-only model for some videos, a strategy also used by 20th Century Fox for the first release of Star Wars in 1982. Two known films released this way were Superman II (1980) and Excalibur (1981). Other rental-only titles included Dirty Harry (1971), The Enforcer (1976), Prince of the City (1981), and Sharky's Machine (1981). Warner executive Morton Fink proposed a plan for dealers to rent films from the studios for six months, but video dealers rejected it, having already found ways to reduce their inventory. Later, Warner Bros. pioneered skipping the rental window entirely for videos like Batman Returns (1992), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and JFK (1991).

In 1990, Warner Home Video bought the worldwide home video rights to the MGM/UA catalog for $125 million. That purchase helped finance MGM/UA's acquisition by Pathé Communications Corporation. The deal was meant to last 12½ years, but it ended early in February 2000, when MGM paid Warner Home Video $225 million to regain video rights to its 5,100-title film library. In exchange, Warner Home Video got full control over the video rights to MGM's pre-1986 library—an asset MGM had acquired from Turner Entertainment Co., but which had been set to expire in 2003 due to a pre-existing licensing deal with MGM.