[Nuno_Miranda]

Originally Posted by Michael Brooke

Sorry, but it simply doesn't take that long to make a film releasable unless it presents really unusual restoration challenges, and I'd be surprised if this was the case here. In fact, it's far more likely that the negatives are in superb condition, since they'll barely have been touched in decades, for much the same reason that BFI Flipside titles generally look terrific. And since Francis is the original producer of the films, he'll have had every incentive to store them properly.

Unless there are unforeseen rights complications or the label decides to wait for a third-party restoration that they didn't know about at the time of the original announcement (Indicator's Revenge of Frankenstein, for instance), it usually takes only a few months between teaser and release - not least because the label will most likely have only taken out a standard licence of between five and seven years - and if they paid over the odds, they'll have even more incentive to get it out ASAP.

Also, things didn't "just stop" during the pandemic. Labels had to rejig their schedules, but if Indicator could carry on working on the Pemini and Michael J. Murphy collections throughout (both of which posed far bigger materials and restoration challenges than the Tyburn films most likely would), this still unknown label* shouldn't have been interrupted too badly. Certainly nothing like two years, anyway.

(*For me, this is the clincher - the Tyburn films come up again and again in casual pub conversations with industry friends, and to this day nobody seems to know who was behind that announcement. This is pretty much unheard of: even if I'm sworn to secrecy at the time, I can usually find out which label is connected to a particular rumour, because this is a tiny world where everyone knows each other.)

While trying very hard not to feel like this was a metaphorical slap in the hand and a "everything you say is wrong" reply, I should point out that I'm not an industry insider, and never professed to be one. This was just a fan wondering if a couple of his favourite actor's films would be finally available, thinking this would be a great place to ask.