New Line Home Entertainment

History

In May 1991, New Line Cinema purchased the home video and foreign rights to films held by Nelson Entertainment (whose library included films inherited from Embassy Pictures) for $15 million, and thus obtained roughly 600 films. Shortly afterwards, New Line Cinema acquired the home video rights to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise from Media Home Entertainment.

Before New Line Cinema formed its own video division, many of the company's films were released on home video by various distributors:

• Warner Home Video (for Gizmo!, Fighting Black Kings and Betty Boop for President)
• MGM/CBS Home Video (for The Street Fighter and Return of the Street Fighter)
• Magnetic Video (for Léonor and Sympathy for the Devil, both through Viacom)
• Wizard Video (for Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Sister Street Fighter, and The Street Fighter's Last Revenge)
• HBO/Cannon Video (for Xtro, The Evil Dead, The First Time, The Exterminators of the Year 3000, Warriors of the Wasteland, Stunts and Polyester).
• Media Home Entertainment (for the first five Nightmare on Elm Street films, and The Hidden among others),
• LIVE Entertainment (for the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film (under the Family Home Entertainment label), Drop Dead Fred and Glengarry Glen Ross).

Later offerings came from RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video and its successor, Columbia TriStar Home Video. When New Line Cinema formed their video division, RCA/Columbia and Columbia TriStar distributed VHS releases, while Image Entertainment released the films on Laserdisc. The New Line-Sony partnership ended in early 1995, when Turner Broadcasting System bought New Line Cinema and from 1995 to 1996, New Line Cinema's home video releases were distributed by Turner's video division, before eventually being turned over to Warner Home Video in 1996. Due to this arrangement, New Line Cinema's releases would advertise certain releases from Warner Bros. and vice versa.

On January 5, 2008, New Line Cinema announced, as did Warner Bros., that it would exclusively support Blu-ray for their films and drop support of HD DVD. The only HD DVD ever released by New Line Home Entertainment was Pan's Labyrinth.

New Line Cinema pursued a policy of regional lockout with its Blu-ray titles, which was in direct contrast to its corporate sibling Warner Home Video which left its Blu-ray titles region-free. After the studio was folded into Warner Bros., Warner discontinued this lockout policy with future New Line releases.

In 2008, after New Line Cinema was folded into Warner Bros., they parted ways with Canadian film distributor Alliance Films. Warner Home Video continued to use the New Line Home Entertainment logo for some time on Blu-ray and DVD releases of titles until the release of The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), after which New Line Home Entertainment was folded into Warner Home Video in 2010. Afterwards, new releases of future and catalog New Line Cinema titles would be released under the Warner Bros. Home Entertainment name.

As of 2025, the home video rights to New Line's library have been licensed over to Arrow Video.

References

References

1. (2012-01-03). "New Line Cinema : About Us".
2. Jeffrey, Don. (May 18, 1991). "New Line Obtains Nelson Vid Rights". BPI Communications.
3. (June 23, 2013). "VHSplatter: The VHS Index: Media Home Entertainment".
4. (January 28, 1994). "New Line to Join Ted Turner Empire Today : Film: With more money, the company is likely to add a few big movies to its annual production schedule".
5. "New Line Details Transition to Blu-ray {{!}} High-Def Digest".
6. "Blu-ray Region Coding - Blu-ray Forum".