Raymond Rohauer Collection Bought

[bobfells]

Jim Parish ran the following news this morning:

Cohen Media nabs Rohauer Film Collection
Titles include prints of 'Nation,' Valentino's 'Sheik'
By Dave McNary - Daily Variety 9/12/2011

Charles S. Cohen has acquired the rights to the Raymond Rohauer Film Collection of over 700 titles, including prints of DW Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," Rudolf Valentino's "Son of the Sheik" and all of Buster Keaton's films.

Cohen Media Group said it plans to develop a comprehensive distribution plan for branding and presenting the library to the marketplace through theatrical distribution, DVD release and digital delivery. The company also intends to substantially increase efforts to market and develop its remake rights.

"There is a gold mine of classic films in this collection," Cohen said. "It is just waiting to be restored and seen in all its full glory and where creatively relevant re-made for today's audiences."

Other titles in the collection include Griffith's "Intolerance" and "Orphans of the Storm," Joseph von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel," Jean Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet" and several Douglas Fairbanks films including "The Thief of Bagdad" and "The Cat and The Canary."

The Cohen Media Group will also be seeking distribution and co-financing ventures for new productions as well as for sequels, remakes and live stage productions.

The Rohauer Collection includes yet-to-be-identified materials including: contracts, shooting scripts, filmmaker notes and a significant amount of rare film memorabilia.

Cohen noted that only 10% of the Rohauer Collection, currently housed at various sites in the US including The Library of Congress and Europe, has been made available and exhibited to the public.

Cohen formed Cohen Media Group in 2008 and the company was a producer on "Frozen River." It's released "Outside the Law," directed by Rachid Bouchareb, and "Chasing Madoff," an adaption of "No One Would Listen," by Harry Markopolos, and will release "My Afternoons With Margueritte" starring Gerard Depardieu, later this month.

[Scoundrel]

I've never heard of Charles S. Cohen.

Does any one have any more information on him...?

Why wouldn't someone like David Shepard have purchased this...?

[silentfilm]

I'm sure that David will answer you, but my guess is that he probably already has material on 75% of the titles that Raymond Rohauer had.

[Richard Warner]

Where does this leave Kino?

[DShepFilm]

With a couple of partners I made an offer on the Rohauer Collection which was deemed inadequate by the receiver (the collection was in bankruptcy in the U.K. and had been on the market for several years). Our offer was based upon what we thought we could possibly earn from the collection in ten years, and was not very different from a couple of other offers close to the same amount, which were also declined.

Mr. Cohen has very deep pockets but I think he will be very surprised to discover the true commercial possibilities of Harry Langdon, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith. The Collection does include some spectacularly good film material on many titles of real historical importance. Raymond Rohauer was sort of creepy but he accumulated an amazing amount of great stuff in his lifetime. But I think all the earning power is in Keaton, and Kino Lorber has years to go on its various contracts.

The Collection also includes a wonderful group of British features but the prior owners previously sold off the U.K. rights to the entire library in perpetuity to help raise funds for their original purchase, and I already learned about the very small potential of older British films in the U.S.A., no matter how good they are (with a few exceptions, including Hitchcock).

I suspect that even the depth of Mr. Cohen's pockets will be challenged by the expense and work involved in preparing many of these films for commercial distribution, and that he might be quite surprised to discover that Rohauer's copyrights cover only his alterations to works which are basically in the public domain or are shared, as is, for example, the copyright in THE SON OF THE SHEIK.

However, I wish him only the best. Anyone who gives sincere and quality promotion to silent cinema can only enlarge the small community of folks who really care about it, and that benefits all of us.

David Shepard

[LouieD]

Didn't his collection include the Chaplin outtakes used in the "Unknown Chaplin" Brownlow and Gill series?

and is there a complete list of what he has/had in his holdings?

[DShepFilm]

There is a list but it is covered by an agreement of confidentiality which had to be signed by all bidders.

The Chaplin outtakes were preserved by and are at the British National Film and Television Archive. The owners of the Rohauer Collection can probably get access but at considerable expense and after enduring an amazing amount of bureaucratic delay.

I made a deal for certain film rights with their (very prominent) owners last November. The elements are at the BFI, covered by a contract which compels delivery; and even though the owners are in London and can make pests of themselves, the BFI in ten months has yet to cough up one frame of film.

David Shepard

[Brooksie]

The idea of exploiting remake rights as a way of financing film releases is an interesting one ... how many of these movies would actually be re-makeable? I think we can safely strike out `Birth of a Nation' ...

[Christopher Jacobs]

The idea of exploiting remake rights as a way of financing film releases is an interesting one ... how many of these movies would actually be re-makeable? I think we can safely strike out `Birth of a Nation' ...

I suspect Adam Sandler and his writers could find a way and should be among the first to be approached. After all, he's already loosely but obviously remade Chaplin's THE KID, Lloyd's THE FRESHMAN, and Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE without acknowledgement, and MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN as an outright remake. Maybe he'll turn THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER into a full-length feature. I'm sure he'd have a field day tackling SON OF THE SHEIK.

[Ken Winokur]

Cohen formed Cohen Media Group in 2008 and the company was a producer on "Frozen River." It's released "Outside the Law," directed by Rachid Bouchareb, and "Chasing Madoff," an adaption of "No One Would Listen," by Harry Markopolos, and will release "My Afternoons With Margueritte" starring Gerard Depardieu, later this month.

I see good news here. I thought that FROZEN RIVER (which this guy apparently co-produced) was the best film of 2008. Independent production? Very intimate portrait of a boarder community that bridges Native Americans, Canadians and other Americans. Hard to describe in a couple of words, but a really wonderful film.

[Brooksie]

The idea of exploiting remake rights as a way of financing film releases is an interesting one ... how many of these movies would actually be re-makeable? I think we can safely strike out `Birth of a Nation' ...

I suspect Adam Sandler and his writers could find a way and should be among the first to be approached. After all, he's already loosely but obviously remade Chaplin's THE KID, Lloyd's THE FRESHMAN, and Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE without acknowledgement, and MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN as an outright remake. Maybe he'll turn THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER into a full-length feature. I'm sure he'd have a field day tackling SON OF THE SHEIK.

Yechhh ... but that brings up another issue: what remake rights could be exploited when the films are out of copyright in any case?

[momsne]

Buying this collection now is quite a gamble, DVD sales in the USA are down 20% from the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011. The movies in the Rohauer collection are a niche in the niche market of very old movies. Maybe Netflix will buy the streaming video rights for the Rohauer collection.

When Warner Bros. executives decided to distribute most unreleased older movies (say, made over 20 years ago) from their film library as DVD-Rs, those executives knew their marketplace. For now, Warners will no longer be selling 5 DVD Gangster collection sets with pressed DVDs that include subtitles and language tracks. Sets that resellers sometimes sold for under $20. For a barebones DVD-R of an old movie, Warner Archive sells individual DVD-R for a usual list price of $25. No more DVD prix fixe DVD sets, everything is now a la carte when it comes to low demand old movies.

When you see Amazon selling blu-rays of fairly new releases for $10 on sale, priced less than music CDs, that gives you an indication of how tough the DVD market is right now. Complete season box sets (containing 5 or 6 DVDs) of TV shows like Supernatural and House are sometimes on sale for $16.99 at Amazon.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the Raymond Rohauer collection now that the collection has a new owner.

[telical]

Buying this collection now is quite a gamble, DVD sales in the USA are down 20% from the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011. The movies in the Rohauer collection are a niche in the niche market of very old movies. Maybe Netflix will buy the streaming video rights for the Rohauer collection.

When Warner Bros. executives decided to distribute most unreleased older movies (say, made over 20 years ago) from their film library as DVD-Rs, those executives knew their marketplace. For now, Warners will no longer be selling 5 DVD Gangster collection sets with pressed DVDs that include subtitles and language tracks. Sets that resellers sometimes sold for under $20. For a barebones DVD-R of an old movie, Warner Archive sells individual DVD-R for a usual list price of $25. No more DVD prix fixe DVD sets, everything is now a la carte when it comes to low demand old movies.

When you see Amazon selling blu-rays of fairly new releases for $10 on sale, priced less than music CDs, that gives you an indication of how tough the DVD market is right now. Complete season box sets (containing 5 or 6 DVDs) of TV shows like Supernatural and House are sometimes on sale for $16.99 at Amazon.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the Raymond Rohauer collection now that the collection has a new owner.

One has to take into account the revenue from DVD rentals like Netflix. Also, there is ad money
to be made from free streaming. Warner's or Cohen can make money by leasing the properties to
an online streaming site which makes money from selling ads. The online streaming site can then
show the movies for "free." We still have to watch the ads.

So, it doesn't mean the owner's of the rights of these movies are losing money, it just means that
DVD sales are lower.

--
Robert Pearson
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[Jim Reid]

I guess it all depends on if the films came with good HD transfers. Otherwise, there will be that cost. The company doing the streaming is probably not going to pick that up. If you use the tranfers done by Kino, Criterion, etc of these elements then you have to cut them in and that pie slice is getting smaller and smaller all the time. I'm not looking at this as a very sound investment. Hope I'm wrong.

[Scoundrel]

David Shepard's post says it all.

If this was a worthwhile endeavor, he would have closed the deal.

Nope, no LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT here,....Move along.

[Jack Theakston]

One has to take into account the revenue from DVD rentals like Netflix. Also, there is ad money to be made from free streaming. Warner's or Cohen can make money by leasing the properties to an online streaming site which makes money from selling ads. The online streaming site can then show the movies for "free." We still have to watch the ads.

Actually, online streaming is a terrible example of making money, because more often than not, it loses it (or balances out in the long-run). Hulu, for example, makes $25-40 per THOUSAND viewers for its spots. That's one of the top streaming sites. A prime-time TV spot costs something in the realm of $180-200,000. For a site like Hulu to make as much money as a single episode of a popular TV show, it has to garner more viewers than the SuperBowl.

How many years do you think it will take for the 1912 version of "Little Lord Fauntleroy" to even make $40?