HerrSchreck wrote:Imagine their Empress finegrain and digibeta burned in the print/tape fire?
(Whapping facepalm with ring turned backwards for bonus unconsciousness because the agony is too great).
No doubt the digibeta for the 90's vhs/LD of Island of Lost Souls burned too, along with the safety positive, too. Smart cookies will pronto throw a run on those Universal vhs tapes while they're still cheap...
Maybe someone has more recent information, but as far as I know the prints that burned were theatrical prints that Universal rented out for the repertory circuit (via Universal Classics). In fact, I had an October booking of
The Scarlet Empress that was cancelled since the print was supposed to come from that facility. But if Universal possessed a fine grain print that was suitable for video transfers, why would they rent it out for theatrical--and non-theatrical--bookings?
Perhaps part of all the confusion surrounding the fire is that various people have been using the term "archive" very loosely, when perhaps "warehouse" or "depot" might better describe what the facility actually was? Universal has a separate archive where they house the negatives and presumably other early generation film elements. There should be no reason why they can't strike a new print of
The Island of Lost Souls. Mind you, this fire is still disastrous since it means we won't be seeing most of those films on the big screen again for a long time, and some titles maybe never.
I can't speak for the videocassette collection, though, but I'd like to think we can take the Universal executives at their word that "nothing lost is irreplaceable."
UPDATE: Someone in the thread about the Universal fire kindly linked to
this article in Variety. Depending on what kind of print was housed there for any given title, the situation could indeed be very serious. For instance, was it an IB Technicolor print? But it's still too early to tell anything for sure. I'm happy to hear that Universal has at least made a initial committment to replace the prints.