Academic

Somewhere, someone has made a very bad decision, I'm afraid.  So, tomorrow at midnight, a new Tron movie will be released, Tron Legacy.  Because my 9 year-old missed his first midnight premiere, Harry Potter on his birthday last month, due to illness, I was going to make it up to him by taking him to the new Tron.  But, I thought we should see the 1982 Tron first.  (I hesitate to admit that I've never seen it.)  Well, that's not happening.

Here's the Amazon page for Tron.  Apparently, no one thought to re-release the original.  You can buy one from an outside seller for hundreds of dollars, but we're not that committed.  So, I went to Netflix, but they don't have it either.  We can "save" it for when and if it is released on DVD.  disney did release a 20th anniversary version in 2002, but apparently then put it in the "Disney vault."  So, Disney wants a generation of people to go see the sequel to a movie that is not generally available for viewing.  And, Disney isn't showing it as a double-feature in theaters, like the Twilight people sometimes do with their series.  I'm no movie executive, but this seems like leaving money on the table.

There is actually mention of the Disney vault in DisneyWar.  Apparently, at the advent of the at-home VCR, Disney executives didn't want to put movies on VHS because they thought that releasing Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and the like every 7 years added to their magic and sold movie tickets.  These executives had to be shown that revenue from VHS tapes would dwarf movie ticket sales of older movies.  Disney still, however, keeps some DVDs in the vault, only releasing them every so often for sale so as to increase demand.  I think that taking Tron out of the vault for the holiday season in which its sequel was released in movie theaters would have been a good idea.

Maybe there's a backstory.  If so, please share.