Tescovision II - the sequel

Following up on my post (below) about Tesco's Irish DVD promotion Tesco have got back to me as follows -

The current range of Irish films on DVD at Tesco were part of an Irish promotion for St Patrick’s Day and runs nationwide. This promotion started on St Patrick’s Week and is still running in stores due to its popularity. There are 37 Irish films in this range, with over 12,000 units sold in the four weeks since St Patrick’s Day. The top five most popular Irish films in the promotion have been:

The Snapper
The Van
Hunger
Omagh
The Quiet Man

Throughout the year we maintain a strong presence of Irish films in our back catalogue DVD section, along with promoting any new Irish DVD releases in our chart.

12,000+ units is pretty good going in a four week period. I've sent in a supplementary enquiring how they are sourcing the films but that may be deemed a commercially sensitive issue.

[update: Tesco tell me the films are sourced through BeaumeX in Walkinstown in Dublin. "We work with an Irish Distribution Company, Beaumex, to source our DVD titles for promotions of this nature – they would work directly with the studios for nominations for the promotion and we would have final choice."]

A number of other questions do come to mind. Are the films' producers seeing any return (however modest) from this, or are distributors finally seeing some payback on rights they may have paid for many years ago? But do they still legitimately hold those rights, in Ireland?

And what of those cases where the production company has been wound up? There are a few Littlebird* titles in there, for instance, who now owns the rights to those titles?

I can update the list of titles with the following (from another perusal of the shelves) -

In Bruges (Universal) €5
Hunger (Pathé) [again, but for €3.50]
Fifty Dead Men Walking €7
Once [unpriced]
Nothing Personal €5


*I will at some stage write about my attempts last year to come by the facts of the demise of Littlebird.