omgitsgodzilla wrote:They literally just let their rights to vs. King Ghidorah and Mothra lapse not too long ago, though. I think they may be kind of letting the franchise go.
It seems that way. It'll be interesting to see if they renew the rights to
Godzilla 2000 in 2025.
Additionally, we've already seen what Sony brought to the table with regard to Godzilla box sets. They released these four DVD sets in late 2004 to capitalize on the 50th anniversary:
All of the discs included in those sets were exactly the same DVDs that Sony had released individually, with
G2K still lacking the Japanese version. They did not bother to do new subtitle translations for
GMK or anything else.
Fast-forward to 2014, when Sony finally released the Japanese versions of the Heisei films and
G2K on BRD to capitalize on the latest Hollywood reboot, and they also reissued their same old
King Ghidorah/
Mothra and
GMK DVDs as a triple feature set:
A year later, in October 2015, they cranked out these budget DVD packs:
Vol. 1 was six movies on three DVDs and all of them were dubbed-only just like Sony's previous DVD releases. Vol. 2 was seven movies on four DVDs and they actually left out the Japanese audio from
MG'93 even though their previous DVD was dual-language.
G2K was again just the US version and
GFW was identical to its original DVD, while the other movies had only the Japanese audio with English subtitles without their dubs.
Rebirth of Mothra 3 was still left out of the DVDs. What's more, aside from
GFW, none of the DVDs in these sets were recycled backstock; they were newly authored, single-sided DVDs containing two movies apiece, and Sony still didn't bother to revise any of the subtitles.
Then a year after
that, in October 2016, Sony dipped into the Godzilla/Mothra well one more time by putting all seven of those DVDs from Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 together in one set:
Sony has never been keen to change their existing products when they compile a Godzilla set. If they were to release a BRD box set in the future, their track record suggests that the disc contents would be identical to the BRDs that Sony released in 2014. The last time they licensed a Godzilla movie from Toho was
GFW more than 15 years ago, and they seemingly just let their rights to
GvsKG and
GvsMothra lapse last year, so it's unlikely that Sony would take an interest in
G'84 or
Biollante now.