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Movies Television

Warner Bros. Releases Dozens of Old Films for Free on YouTube, Bypassing Paid Streaming 62

Posted by msmash from the good-things dept.
Warner Bros. Discovery has quietly begun releasing dozens of its older films for free on YouTube, marking an unexpected shift in how the major studio handles its back catalog. Over the past month, the company has uploaded more than 30 full-length movies across five YouTube channels, without digital rights management or regional restrictions.

The collection includes both critically acclaimed films like "Waiting for Guffman" and "Michael Collins," as well as commercial disappointments like the 2002 Eddie Murphy film "The Adventures of Pluto Nash." Some releases have significant historical value, such as "Oh, God!" - a 1977 George Burns comedy that earned $51 million at release (equivalent to $265 million in 2024). This move represents a departure from traditional studio practices of protecting content through strict digital rights management and paid streaming services. Warner Bros. owns multiple distribution channels, including the Max streaming service and Turner Classic Movies, which makes the decision to release these films freely on YouTube particularly notable.
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Warner Bros. Releases Dozens of Old Films for Free on YouTube, Bypassing Paid Streaming More

Warner Bros. Releases Dozens of Old Films for Free on YouTube, Bypassing Paid Streaming

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  • ad-supported? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by usedtobestine ( 7476084 ) on Thursday February 06, 2025 @01:02PM (#65147371)

    I wonder if this is a test of Youtube's ad revenue vs paid subscriptions.

    • 2 hours of ads for erectile dysfunction treatments.

      I think they'd have to split the movies up into 12 minute segments. That's my youtube attention span.

      Or 200 youtube shorts, as so many channels I watch have started doing. I'd get 45 seconds of Oh God every time I use the bathroom.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      .... the 2002 Eddie Murphy film "The Adventures of Pluto Nash."

      Eddie Murphy has been in a lot of movies and they have all made more than $100 Million at the box office, EXCEPT, "The Adventures of Pluto Nash." This is just an attempt to get some money for their shittiest movies.

    • Certainly it is.

    • Re:ad-supported? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot@worf.TEAnet minus caffeine> on Thursday February 06, 2025 @02:00PM (#65147565)

      Could be. These could be movies that simply have no more commercial value. Put it up on streaming and no one would watch it. Put it up on YouTube and maybe you'll make a few bucks with the ad revenue.

      A few bucks is bigger than zero, and hey, you get a bit of goodwill in the process. I mean, they could be left to rot in the archives - with no commercial value, they won't ever see the light of day again because no one would buy it on DVD or subscribe to stream it. Now they make it freely available, still copyrighted, and make a few bucks.

      As a bonus, they're also likely part of the content match system.

      As far as Warner Bros goes, I guess it's win-win-win. Make a few bucks off movies no one would pay for anymore, win a few friends by putting it online for free, and provide content for YouTube's content match system so others can't reuse clips of it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I did watch the Dungeons and Dragons movie back when it came out, and the two sequels. From memory it wasn't awful but was pretty niche. But yeah, I probably won't be watching it again.

    • I wonder if this is a test of Youtube's ad revenue vs paid subscriptions.

      Probably. We'll likely never know about this, but I suspect that these particular movies also had very low physical disc sales. It's a really unimpressive group of films with maybe Mutiny On The Bounty being the only classic.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MikeS2k ( 589190 )

      As long as the adverts aren't randomly spliced in, right in the middle of sentences. Watching a Computerphile episode and all of a sudden in the middle of a sentence an ad comes on talking about hand sanitizer. Reminded me to switch to Firefox - some kind soul has uploaded Akira and Terry Gilliam's Brazil to Youtube and I could watch those in peace.

  • Come on. You can do it. I know you will find something to bitch and complain about this.

    • Why'd they get down voted? People have already started.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      How about "Where are the Roadrunner cartoons?".

      • How about "Where are the Roadrunner cartoons?".

        I would happily pay money for a high-quality copy of the Road Runner cartoons, but on physical media of course, so they can't censor anything. "OMG the coyote was cross-dressing as a lady roadrunner! That's transphobic!" etc.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Well... considering that it's YouTube, you're probably going to have to watch about an hour of ads spaced out 8 minutes apart from each other to finish watching your two hour movie.

      Just because it's "free", it doesn't mean that viewing experience is going to be enjoyable.

  • We need more open streaming services (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Thursday February 06, 2025 @01:10PM (#65147409)
    Archive.org and Wikimedia commons has videos but they are not really optimised for it. Having true neutral medium that bridges the gap between piracy and commercial streaming ethically would come in useful. As usual copyright reform will go a long way as 1977 is a long way from the public domain under current and possible future laws.

  • This is great news (Score:3)

    by Major_Disorder ( 5019363 ) on Thursday February 06, 2025 @01:18PM (#65147443)
    I am probably the only person who loves The Adventures of Pluto Nash. Unfortunately for me my copy is really poor quality. Off I go to youtube.

  • SubUrbia, wow, that was hard to find a copy of, back when that was a thing. Cool.

  • This article makes the move sound very altruistic, but in reality you will be watching ads every five minutes so not exactly generous.

    • No, I won't, because a certain python script still works.

    • This article makes the move sound very altruistic, but in reality you will be watching ads every five minutes so not exactly generous.

      Perhaps it was written by someone who is too young to remember when movies used to eventually make it to broadcast television. Yeah, it was usually edited to hell and if there was any profanity in the film it got dubbed over ("frig you, forkball!"), but hey it was free.

      I'm not even sure why this is newsworthy, other than because YouTube is involved. There's already other free-with-ads streaming platforms that have older/less popular films from major studios. It doesn't represent a paradigm shift in the i

      • Perhaps it was written by someone who is too young to remember when movies used to eventually make it to broadcast television. Yeah, it was usually edited to hell and if there was any profanity in the film it got dubbed over ("frig you, forkball!"), but hey it was free.

        I'm not even sure why this is newsworthy, other than because YouTube is involved. There's already other free-with-ads streaming platforms that have older/less popular films from major studios. It doesn't represent a paradigm shift in the industry; if you want the latest popular films you're still gonna have to open your wallet.

        I wonder if some of these older movies have some politically-incorrect scenes that Warner are trying to distance themselves from. This way they can release a heavily-edited version to Youtube for free, flooding the scene with their updated, sanitised versions. The originals won't ever be "censored" but all extant copies will have the questionable scenes scrubbed. So if you're looking for, I don't know, blackface scenes, or cross-dressing scenes, or whatever else you're not allowed to screen anymore, those s

      • I do very much remember those days, and I didn't watch movies on TV back then either for that reason.
    • This happened with In Time, it was free then it had a revival on TikTok, I watched it for free and a few months later you had to rent it:

      Welcome to a world where time has become the ultimate currency. You stop aging at 25, but there's a catch: You're genetically-Engineered to live only one more year, unless you can buy your way out of it.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Pluto Nash (Score:4, Funny)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Thursday February 06, 2025 @01:37PM (#65147493)

    Robot Chicken did a great segment on Pluto Nash. https://youtu.be/DrQcNwsjVEQ?s... [youtu.be]

  • Relearning (Score:4, Informative)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Thursday February 06, 2025 @01:39PM (#65147509)

    Movie companies keep relearning the same lesson again and again. Make it as easy as possible to watch their movies, and they'll make more money. They learned it when putting movies on TV, then rentals, then sell-through, then paid streaming, and now ad-supported streaming.

    • They make the most money when they have the most control, but the internet doesn't like them having control.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      You can make the "franchise" stronger by letting people share the original, then profit off it with new things or merchandise.

      Except for pluto nash.

  • No regional restricttions, eh? (Score:4, Informative)

    by DrogMan ( 708650 ) on Thursday February 06, 2025 @01:58PM (#65147559) Homepage
    Here in the UK: Video unavailable The uploader has not made this video available in your country

  • I don't know how long it'll last (Score:4, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday February 06, 2025 @02:23PM (#65147625)
    But there's an official YouTube channel called Doctor who classic that's posting full arcs of Dr who.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      But there's an official YouTube channel called Doctor who classic that's posting full arcs of Dr who.

      Depends where, the BBC generally doesn't care about it's copyrights outside of the UK. You can pretty much find the entire back catalogue of a lot of BBC TV shows like Have I Got News For You or Mock The Week on you tube when you're travelling outside the UK (maybe the EU and possibly the US too). When I'm travelling I can usually stay up to date on HIGNFY, if not a day or two after broadcast. Also a lot of old BBC content has been lost, Many classic Doctor Who episodes amongst them (The BBC used to reuse

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jjbenz ( 581536 )
      That sounds awesome. I'll have to check it out, I usually watch the old Dr. Who stuff on Pluto TV.

  • What strange combinations (Score:3)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Thursday February 06, 2025 @03:10PM (#65147767) Journal
    There's a bewildering mix of good and awful in the list [youtube.com]. I mean, it's got The Mission [imdb.com] with Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons, which won Best Picture (and six other Oscars) in 1987, alongside Critters 4 [imdb.com], which has an 18% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

    To use Hollywood jargon: who greenlit this?

  • If I had a piece of crap video that no one would ever pay to see, I'd post it to YouTube, write some puff pieces about it and finally collect some ad revenue from it.

  • copyright needs massive reforms

  • Bah, not in Australia... (Score:3)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Thursday February 06, 2025 @04:50PM (#65148071)

    The article about this talks about "region free" but none of the links work here in Australia :(

  • Pluto Nash was a funny and entertaining movie, great to watch it again for free. I own it already on DVD, so I hope the quality of the YT is top notch.

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