Well, I'm nearly a year late, but here's the full story. At the turn of the century DVD was catching on, but it wasn't the thriving medium that it is now -- and the studios weren't looking to release things that they didn't figure would be bestsellers (sadly, many studios and retailers still feel this way). So Anchor Bay licensed the rights to release a handful of Disney's films -- each of which had attained a cult following, but none big enough to equal blockbuster sales for Disney. All of the Disney titles that Anchor Bay got had been out of print since the '80s and the studio had basically forgotten about them. I think "Midnight Madness" was the first Disney film (though nowhere on it does it bear the Disney name) that Anchor Bay obtained, and that was in the late '90s.
Without going into too much detail (there's a huge article on the net about "Watcher in the Woods" that tells the full story), Anchor Bay put out a lavish special edition of "The Happiest Millionaire" that was loaded with extras. The disc got rave reviews -- reviews that made the House of Mouse look bad for not releasing it themselves. Disney had to honor their commitment to hand over some films to Anchor Bay, but after that release, Disney put a stranglehold on the extras. As soon as Anchor Bay's option ran out, Disney greedily repackaged the films (AB had already remastered them, after all) and released them themselves. Presumably Disney doesn't have the rights to the commentaries and interviews in the booklet (since they were obtained by Anchor Bay)... I dunno why they dropped the extra trailers.
Anchor Bay and director John Hough wanted to release a 2-disc set with the director's cut of the original version of "Watcher in the Woods" (there's a great deal of footage that hasn't publicly been seen since the film's 1980 release) but Disney wouldn't permit it -- even though that version does still exist. Since there's been a great deal of talk about the original ending, Disney reluctantly handed over the two alternate ending cuts -- but neither of them are quite the same as the version screened in 1980.
It's a shame that things went sour between the companies. We might've had the director's cut of this, the wonderful making of "Return to Oz" and God knows what else on disc.
This page tells the entire story:
http://www.geocities.com/ditcin4/watchermystery.html
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