I just saw and signed this online petition (LINK) for an official Thief DVD (via ASIFA page).
The main thing is that by signing you are saying that this would be a DVD that you would be interested in buying. It's asking for the film to be finished. Personally I would be happy to get something along the lines of what petition signer 84 or 85 wrote: "... Release a Special Collector’s Edition DVD of the Workprint version; fully uncut and unedited; in widescreen; with digitally restored and remastered picture and audio; extra features like a special introduction to the DVD by Richard Williams himself; audio commentary by Richard Williams; early artwork, drawings and pencil tests; all the BBC documentaries about the film; an all-new documentary about the film’s troubled history, Richard’s other film’s, “ The Little Island” “Love Me Love Me Love Me” etc courtesy of him; and other extras to make the DVD worthy of the name, “Special Collector’s Edition”.
Update: I added our own poll on the right.
If there would be an official DVD using only Williams footage, would you buy it?
1. Yes
2. Yes, but only if the film is properly finished.
3. Yes, a high quality version of the workprint, with storyboards. Plus documentaries etc.
4. No. The way it's released right now is good enough for me.
5. No, I'm not interested.
2 comments:
Via email, Disney confirmed to me that they own the film and all rights - except for the 1995 U.S. Miramax cut, which is owned by the Weinstein Bros. themselves.
Disney owns it ? Wow.
Ok, so this gives me an idea: a few years back at Disney when there was downtime between projects they let Eric Goldberg have a crew to animate his Rhapsody in Blue project which he had already done the layout work for . Rather than have people sit idle or be laid-off they put them to work on this special project . It went smooth as butter and it turned out great.
I wonder if post-Princess & The Frog the crew could be rolled on to finishing the Thief footage which remained to be done at the time that the film was removed from Dick's control . Maybe get Eric Goldberg to supervise the animation? Would Dick even be interested in coming on to direct that remaining footage ? Somehow that seems so doable , but at the same time not ... I just don't know if Dick Williams would want to do that, under the inevitable conditions that Disney places on the project ... but maybe with the right people shepherding it ... bring Don Hahn back in to produce , Eric Goldberg supervises the day to day animation production, Dick supervising overall .... could it work ?
Maybe if the project were handled by an outside company , but Disney loans the Princess & Frog crew (who would have been laid-off anyway at the end of P&F) out to this outside company , much like they loaned some of their animators to James Baxter to help out on the Enchanted animation .
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