The Extras - Moviezyng & the Warner Archive 17th Anniversary Sale

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Send us Fan MailGet the details on Moviezyng's new and improved website from Blair Zykan of Allied Vaughn Entertainment. Moviezyng is the exclusive retailer for the Warner Archive's 17th Anniversary sale, and Blair provides all the details you need to know to shop the over 600 titles that will be available.  Blair also explains how Moviezyng is being rebuilt as a collector-first store for physical media. Blair explains how the new site improves search and browsing, how shipping and rewards change the real cost of buying, and updates us on street date delays.Thank you for supporting the Extras by using our affiliate link:The Extras Moviezyng Affiliate LinkMoviezyng's Exclusive Warner Archive 17th Anniversary 4 for $54 Sale runs from March 23-31. Additional titles for just $13.50 each! Be sure to use Archive17 at checkout to get your discount. See the Moviezyng website for more details. The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras TV YouTube ChannelThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupJoin our new public Facebook Group for Warner Archive Animation Fans and get the latest update on all the releases.As an Amazon Affiliate, The Extras may receive a commission for purchases through our purchase links.  There is no additional cost to you, and every little bit helps us in the production of the podcast.  Thanks in advance.Otaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers.  Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals.  [e-mail]

Hi, this is George Feldlstein of Warner Archive Famedom. You're listening to The Extras with Tim Millard. Hi, Tim Mollard here, big news. The Warner Archive is having a 17th anniversary sale starting today and running through the end of March, 2026. If you'd like to get more information on how you can get involved in that sale, well, my guest today is Blair Zykin of Allied Vaughn Entertainment, and he's going to take us through that process,

how you can order through their consumer website, Movising.com, and tell us a little bit about the sale and the new revamped website and how it's so much easier for consumers to navigate and order. And now they have a rewards program as well. So we'll get into all that with Blair in our conversation here. Blair, it's good to have you on the podcast. It's great to be here, Tim. I so appreciate you inviting me on. You talk to George all the time. I talk to George on the podcast all the time, but we don't really get on the podcast and talk. You and I sometimes talk behind the scenes as well, but it's good to have you on so that people can meet you, see you, and hear about all the great changes that are happening at Movies. And I did want to talk about

that before we dive into the Warner Archive sale, which I know is why a lot of people are tuning in right now. So tell us a little bit about this consumer retail site, Movie Zing. Well, movie Zing started about 10 years ago, and its original purpose was to be able to provide studios and filmmakers and content providers who may not have their own direct-to-consumer operation, provide them a web store that they could direct traffic to, and one which they could work collaboratively with to create sales and promotions for their particular titles. But one of the interesting pieces or evolutions over the last 10 years has been a combination of where the collector has become such a more vital component of the overall audience and fan base for physical media. Combined with, let's say, the big box stores, dot com stores, maybe not putting as much attention or emphasis toward physical media.

So starting about six months ago, we underwent a tremendous refresh of the Moviesing store. And if somebody has not been to Moviesing.com over the last 60 days, well, you haven't seen Moviesing. And that's a little bit of what I guess what we're here to talk about today is some of the changes that we've made in order to really make it a collector first destination. Right. kind of to go back to the Allied Vaughn part of this. I know Allied Vaughn has a relationship with Warner Archive. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, we've been partners with the Warner Archive Collection since its inception in 2009. And I was a part of the company then and was a participant in the work that went into the first 150 titles that launched on March 23rd, 2009. And now,

Of course, we've got over 4,000 titles both in 4K, Blu-ray, DVD, box sets, you name it. We've got just an amazing array of historical films and even more contemporary products that are available under license that Allied Vaughn operates in conjunction with Warner Archive. And Mooby-Zing is a wholly owned subsidiary of Allied Vaughan Entertainment. Well, one of the things I noticed is that in the last three or four, Warriors, it feels like the relationship between Allied Vaughn and the Warner Archive has gotten much stronger, much deeper. It's been a terrific partnership throughout the 17 years. I think what consumers see is the types of titles that are being introduced, harvesting deeper parts

of the collection, bringing out restored versions such as the searchers on 4K, but also a wonderful box sets. And one of the things that I'm excited about, as well is all the animation, the classic animation titles that were coming out now. So not only shop from current titles, but a really exciting slate of titles that will be coming out over the course of 2006. Yeah, I think one of the frustrations that I've noticed, you know, in talking about the Warner Archive with the fans is there is no Warner Archive website you go to, you know, where you could say, okay, I want to look at for the back catalog or I want to search for this or that.

And I think Moviesing is kind of moved into a position where you can do that, where people who want to search the current releases but also the back catalog can go to your website there at Moviesing and, you know, type it in the search bar and find it and it can basically bring up the whole back catalog, right?

I can. One of the things that we tried to do with the rebuild of Movies and I talked about making it really a collector first destination. And we worked with collectors, did surveys. I've personally spoken with probably 500 collectors over the last eight or nine years, and especially as we were looking to redo the site over the last year. And collectors shared with us really good information on what they want to see.

And navigation and discovery is one of the most. important. And so one, the search engine that operates movies and does a great job of really pulling the right kinds of titles based on the search terms. We're searching on titles. You can search on actors and actresses. You can search on brands. But even more important than that, we went through and took the Warner catalog overall and have segmented it into the three areas that collectors want to look at. So we've got Warner Archive is its own segmentation. The Warner Home Entertainment titles, they have a section,

as well as the reissued titles that we've been working with Warner Brothers over the last year and a half to bring out products that had gone, let's say, out of print, and now have migrated over to Allied Vaughn Entertainment. And there too you can navigate. And so we're making it as easy as we possibly can. for that collector to find what they're looking for, but even more than that, to browse and discover titles

that they didn't necessarily know were available on physical media, but now they can find them all at Moviesing. And probably one of the key pieces there is because movie Zing carries every title, not just every title for the Warner Archive Collection, but we carried in stock because we shipped straight from the Allied Von Entertainment Warehouse,

and it gives us a chance to ship more quickly. as well as in stock all the time. Right. We'll come back to that because I did want to ask you about some of that shipping. But while you were talking, it just triggered in my mind. So, for example, one of the titles that went out of stock, Looney Tunes Platinum Collection, was that one that you helped us get back into stock here because it was being priced way out of the range of the realm of collectors? And now it's available again for under $30. You're correct in that. And that's an example of titles that have gone out of print and just didn't make sense to distribute in the old model. And we're able to work with Warner Brothers in a way that brings those titles back to life.

And if I recall correctly from some of our previous conversations, I mean, this new model is really helping keep the price down as well because you can do it at a cheaper. more cost-efficient way? The way we operate, and it'd be important to say, I think these titles that we are bringing out, our whole effort is what we call a minimum inventory and make it very efficient. We don't fill warehouse, multiple warehouses with giant inventories. We run a lean operation from the standpoint of keeping those titles available. You balance both the inventory that you have on hand so that you can ship very quickly, but not have so much inventory where it becomes a factor that could influence or lead to higher prices. Yeah.

And let's lay to rest maybe a myth with the Warner Archive where people say, is that a made-on-demand type service? And what does that mean? And is the quality then as good as the regular quality? Maybe you could explain that for fans? Sure. all of the Blu-Razzo and 4Ks for the Warner Archive collection and the new releases that we come out, that's all replicated product.

Yeah. But we operate as a very efficient operation in terms of our sourcing and as well as how we manage inventory, manage shipping so that the goal is always in stock, always available. Yeah. That said, there are titles in Blu-Razin people know Allied Vaughn Entertainment as also having its own on-demand manufacturing capability. And of course, we do have that. And we manufacture, there are titles for studios that we manufacture on demand as Blu-rays, as well as DVDs. And I know sometimes the consumers maybe place a higher value on a replicated product versus a manufactured on-demand

or recorded product. Our guarantee is the same for both. And I've been involved with the company and the manufacturing processes for 25 years now. So you get a feel over 25 years to what are the reliability rates and all of those. And our performance metrics for DVDs and Blu-Rays on recorded or versus replicated, both perform very well. We provide the same guarantee if it doesn't play. If it has a defect, we take care of it. And so the customers can purchase with confidence regardless of the manufacturing method. Yeah, and I think since you brought that up, you're a large enough company that you can have an email

or somebody who can answer any questions that there might be if there is a defect on any product. And that has happened, and I think you've put the email out there for people to reach out to you, and that's a nice thing to have with the larger company of Allied Baw. What you have with Movies-Ing,

we're a collector-first web store, but we serve both casual, casual buyers as well as the ardent collectors. Our philosophy is it's right or we make it right. And that's stated right on our site in terms of our guarantee. But bring the power and the knowledge that comes from being Allied Vaughn Entertainment, who works with 350 studios and operates both the manufacturing facility and warehousing, But we also bring with that movie Zing, which we're not a large big box web store, but we have 37,000, 38,000 titles.

But what we provide there is the expertise that comes from being a part of Allied Vaughn, but also the personal service that comes from both Allied and Moviesing being a 100% employee-owned company. everyone that the consumer interacts with is an owner and we act like it and we care like it and where that's part of our mission is to take great care of that collecting community. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's go back now to talk a little bit about this website. I have it up. I'm looking at it.

One of the first things I really like is it's just so much easier than the old website because you're using the big tiles to drive people to the main interest areas. You've got your current sales. We're trying a whole lot of new things with the reintroduction of movies and part of it's celebrating a totally fresh new new site and part of it is we want to create the collector's favorite place to shop. And we wanted to go take a totally different approach and say, hey, let's be a place where the collector looks first and let's reward them. And then not only that, speaking of reward, we launched. in conjunction with the new movie Zing, a Zing rewards program where every purchase earns points. And the goal there is, let's suppose you buy one of those pre-orders titles, every dollar

you spend earns points. And the goal is to make it so that when titles are not necessarily a title that isn't on sale, the collector can then use those points and still be able to get a discount on that title with the overall goal being be a part of a movie Zing and a part of the Zing rewards and you'll never pay full price again. Nice. Nice. The other thing I like about this is you've got this whole tone that you've created. We're making physical media fun again. I love that because it is fun. I mean, we're here to have fun and collect and own our favorite TV movies animation. then you've got some of the top sellers or titles that you want to promote. And then lower, you have the month's top 10.

I like that. Makes it easy, nice big tiles so that you can see everything there. And you're not fighting through some groceries or other items that you really aren't interested in because you're here for physical media. And then if you scroll down, you do have our good friend George on here. You got a little clip from George and some of the others. who you work with. So I'm enjoying the new redesign. I like it. Now let's talk specific about this Warner Archive anniversary sale. Tell us what you have planned. We have taken the theme of past sales, and this is a four for 54 sale. Those that have participated in previous sales, well,

they'll notice that it's a little bit of a price increase over the previous year. However, a couple of important pieces to note. Last year it was a 4-4-49, and the shipping cost was under the old movie Zing store, and the shipping cost had an incremental increase on a per-d-d-disc basis for every disc after the first one. With the 4-4-4, and with the new Moviesing, we've cut our shipping cost for multi-unit purchases by as much as 60, 75%. And so for the customer, and give you an example, with a 4-for-54, an average order based on previous years, it's got to be at least four, but we typically get orders of 6, 7, 8, 12, 15 units. And for customers that are buying in that four to eight or ten unit range on an order. The amount of savings that they save on the shipping

cost will offset the vast majority of the increase going from 49 to 54. And then combine that with register for Zing rewards and you accumulate points and you've got a very comparable sale to last year. A couple things triggered in my mind as we're talking. One is you mentioned shipping. I assume you're talking about in the U.S. But do you also ship? internationally. We ship worldwide to 55 countries. Yeah. And so international fans, because I know this is a pain point for many of our listeners and followers is, I want to go and I want to order the newest one or archive or other one or archive. You know, it's harder to find where it's available or to get it chipped or in a timely manner and things of that nature. I often direct people to movie Zing,

but maybe you can tell us exactly how you serve that international consumer. Sure. We use, a freight forwarder that then takes it from our warehouse, processes it, and our warehouse is located in Aurora, Illinois, and people will see that address on the website. And so ABC Logistics takes the orders, gets them to the individual country for destination, and this is all fully tracked door to door. And then once in country, turns them over to the local postal service, which then handles delivery. We've done a lot of shopping and always look at our international shipping rates. I think people will be very pleased with the shipping rates that we get.

And there too, we're basically consumer pays what we pay. We don't make money on shipping. Our goal is not that. Our goal is to make it affordable for both U.S. and international customers to get there. and they can see that shipping cost real time when they're calculating their checkout. One of the other things that international buyers struggle with is, boy, it takes me a long time to get that pre-order. I can't seem to get it for weeks or months or whatever. If they were to do a pre-order, let's say, of the next month's Warner Archive releases,

if they put in that pre-order, will they have it shipped on the street date internationally? That's a great question, Tim. So it's definitely an advantage of purchasing from Moviesing where we're shipping straight out of the Allied Vaughn Entertainment Warehouse. And customers that buy from Moviesing, if the stock has arrived in time, orders generally shipped from Moviesing to arrive on or shortly after the street date. Of course, international shipping takes longer.

Right. So that I would put the caveat that it would apply more toward U.S. continental U.S. shipping to arrive at that time frame. We ship via media mail in the continental U.S. And that's generally, let's say a five to seven day or four to seven day, depending on what part of the country you're in. If the stock is available, those orders will arrive, you know, generally speaking, the week of the street date of the title.

even international orders will generally arrive faster because all of the inventory, no matter who the customer purchased from, the inventory eventually had started from the AV Entertainment warehouse and there are occasions where a retailer may not have brought in stock right away, and so Moves-Zing will get it to them faster. So if I heard you correct, because it's kind of like from the source, there's a chance set, it at least will get in process more quickly. However long it takes is. Without a doubt, it does get in, yeah, it does get in process more quickly.

Well, you mentioned something that I wanted to also ask you about, and that is some of the delays that have been happening with Street Date, and some of that is due to not having enough in stock and things of that nature. But there was also some of that, I think, caused by replicators. There's really only one replicator that all the studios are relying on. Do you see that continuing or do you think that it potentially is getting better? I think we will see it get better. And I think we actually have seen improvement in that area over the last couple of months.

Okay. In particular. And some of the dynamics there can get influenced by, you know, replicator supply demand, logistics coming from replication facility into our warehouse otherwise. and it's been a little bit topsy-turvy, you know, kind of times in over the last, you know, four to six months, but we're seeing improvement. Good, good, good. Well, I think the main thing we wanted to be sure and talk about was this sale, very excited

about the sale. I love how you explained that, yes, there's an increase in the price, but because of the shipping that will offset a good chunk of that, hopefully. The other thing I did want to ask about is, I know you also represent. represent Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, but then you also represent some of the other studios. Maybe you could run through a list real briefly of some of the other studios you sell their product and just how much of their library do you sell? Sure. It's probably easier to say who we don't carry because that list is pretty much zero.

Right now we have hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of titles from Universal, the Universal Vault collection, a whole, an array of, oh, gosh, you know, notable titles that have come out, ranging anywhere from like Woody Woodpecker and from an old classic animation to fresh new releases from Sony. We have both classic films. We've got 4K. We were the company that brought out the Seinfeld Complete Boxet series in 4K and Blu-ray. We work with, right now, have about 500 Disney and ABC and sort of Disney family titles all the way to, whether it's a Cineverse to as sort of mini major studios, all the way through boutique studios and down into individual filmmakers.

We add about 200 plus titles every month to the Allied Bon Entertainment catalog. And we've got probably over 38,000 titles right now. I noticed a lot of independent producers, directors, people who have put out movies use you as well. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. If you're looking for a hard-to-find title, you might want to try here at the movies in because you do have so many of those people coming to you directly. You are correct.

Well, was there anything I forgot about the sale or anything that we haven't really covered? Blair? Well, I think you'll have a link that they can look at in the in the comment section of the video or the audio. Click on the link and support Tim's podcasts and take that link over to Moviesing. It'll take you straight to the collection page for all the 600 plus titles that will be available via the Warner Archive sale. And we'll look forward to seeing everybody over there. That sounds great. Thanks for coming on the podcast. explaining it. There's just a lot of questions with the changing landscape of physical media these days. And I think hearing directly from you and seeing where some people, some agencies, some retailers are shrinking their physical media presence. I've noticed you doing the opposite

there at Al-Lad Vaughn in Movies. You're actually increasing. And that's a great sign. And I love seeing that. So thanks so much, Blair. Well, thank you. Thank you again. for the invite and the long-term support of both Allied Voined Entertainment and Moviesing. Well, hey, I hope you found that informative. Blair had a lot of good information for those of you who want to browse the Moviesing website, see how it's changed, and to be part of the Warner Archive 17th anniversary sale on Moviesing. I do want to let everybody know that we have signed up to be an affiliate of Moviesing, so we will receive a commission.

And if you've been thinking about how you can help support the podcast, This is one way. It doesn't cost you a penny. If you just click on our link and then do your purchasing afterwards, we will get credit for that. So I want to thank you for your support in that manner. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed about physical media. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of the extras podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive

and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes.