seems the 4 Laika films have disappeared from the store?
Yes, this happened awhile back. The films have moved to a different licensor with which we don't currently have a relationship. I can't shed any light on when or if they will return.
This sort of gets to
@Ironwill's question -- the answer is honestly so complex that it's verging on something you could get a graduate degree in. I can't discuss specifics (partly because I don't have that grad degree!), but in general terms, I'll say that one of the eye-opening things for me as an interested observer has been learning how complex the movie business is.
It's not uncommon at all for a film to be released by one studio, but for home distribution to be handled by an entirely different studio or company. Sometimes physical media distribution and electronic distribution are handled by different companies, or different independent business units within one company. And these distribution agreements can change over time. Sometimes a studio may decide to sell the rights they hold in a movie or group of movies to another company. Or studios may merge with or acquire other studios.
Changes like this can cause movies to become unavailable, at least temporarily. There are a surprising number of movies that are not available for electronic sale
at all -- movies you've heard of -- and often that's because the rights are in some kind of limbo for one reason or another.
That doesn't even get into the topic of "windows". As an example, it's not uncommon for a studio to sell exclusive rights to films during a particular window of time, like to a premium cable channel. (This can happen before the film is even produced -- for example, they may have an exclusivity deal with a studio for all of their films released during a given year.) Those deals give them the exclusive rights to a film during a certain date range. So a movie may be released for home sale, only to disappear from all online retailers during that exclusivity window, and then it will reappear once the window expires. And of course the pandemic has made this even more complex, with premium rentals (so-called PVOD) becoming more common.
Having said all of that, one thing that's nice about Kaleidescape versus some other services is that when you make a movie purchase, your rights to view and download that movie are not subject to changes in window or shifting licenses. We might have to remove a title from sale for a time, but if you already purchased it, it remains on your system, playable. And it remains in your store account, so that you can download it, even though nobody else can currently purchase it.
Finally, I should certainly acknowledge that we as a company also have finite resources when it comes to bringing new movies onto the store. It takes time and attention from actual people for every movie we add to the store, and so we have to prioritize our efforts. If we can only process a certain number of titles in a given week, some other movies may have to wait a bit. Content additions can sometimes be "bursty" -- we might bring a new studio onto the store, for example, and that causes an influx of a lot of titles all at once. Or (at least in pre-COVID times), a particular time of year might see a bunch of high-profile new releases, while other times of the year are quiet.
So, I hope that helps to explain just a little bit what goes into bringing new content to the movie store.