Although Buena Vista Home Entertainment has licensed many of its library titles in the past to third party distributors in the past including Anchor Bay and Criterion, the company made an unexpected move yesterday by licensing 66 titles to competitor MGM Home Entertainment, many of them previously released by Anchor Bay.

The first wave of releases, due in mid-2003 will include favorites , Duel in the Sun, Straw Dogs and Silkwood. The remaining titles will be released over the course of 2003 and 2004.

While many of the titles in the coming releases already have decent DVD releases, MGM promises new features and supplements on many of the titles.

While certainly a strange development, any peace between studios that results in more DVDs hitting the market is a welcome event.