History Lesson - in the beginning, the producers, distributors, theatres and studios were all one company. If you wanted to make that entertainment involving moving pictures, you needed to own every corner of the production and distribution process.
That of course soon changed and today, every little bit of the process is a separate company. Producers no longer own studios, cameras and all the other bits and bobs and when a movie is completed, all you have to show for your $200m is a series of hard-disks in a vault and folder filled with contracts deposited with your lawyers. You also have a limited company, usually carrying the title of that one movie - that company is your product!
Today, movie rights inhabit a world that is very different to the world most people live in. Even if you are a known maker of successful movies (director, producer, whatever) you will spend most of your time putting the finances together for your next movie. To do this, you must negotiate with all kinds of people who have money, loads and loads of money!
The largest lump of money comes from the distributors. Others, such as agencies for product placement, star actors and directors and even the production company can be persuaded to either dig into their pockets or work for what is known as 'points-on-gross' (i.e. a percentage of gross revenues) but the real profits down the road come from distribution.
If the movie is a 'tent-pole' (lifts the whole industry around it) aka 'blockbuster' then it will make a profit right from the start. Home and World box-office (i.e. USA and rest-of-World ticket sales) cover the costs and the rest is jam. If you are sitting on a hot franchise (Batman) or are self-financing (Bond) or you believe that the movie will become a cult product with a long tail that will be earning for decades to come (Bladerunner-2049) you may seek to limit the time the rights sit with the distributor. Perhaps you negotiate a deal where the rights revert to the producers after say ten years.
Or it could be that you are just so damn powerful (e.g. Kathleen Kennedy) that you can dictate terms, so you hang onto what is known as the residuals - all those rights that generate money in a steady stream for decades to come. That is how Oprah Winfrey does business - she sells her programming relatively cheaply but hangs onto the residuals like grim death!
Movies are exploited in waves, starting with cinema release, followed by BluRay sales. Then comes PPV (pay per view) followed by several waves of decreasingly valuable pay per channel. Each wave is separated by at least three months. Right at the end, comes terrestrial TV about two years after the movie is released.
Each wave is negotiated separately and is a different set of rights. As the value decreases, the movie gets bundled with other movies into ever-larger packages, whose value can run to a billion dollars or more. Each wave is time-limited. Terrestrial TV gets two years and is given the rights for two screenings plus channel repeats.
On-line streaming runs parallel to the conventional rights, but it too is limited to sets of waves and each wave is also time-limited. Apple can no more buy the streaming rights to a movie in perpetuity, than any other distribution channel.
In the distant past, producers and distributors assumed that movies had a set life-span and after that they were worthless. Then along came television and home viewing on VHS and one enterprising man called Leo Kirch, who began buying up old rights. He started in 1960 with Fellini's La Strada using money borrowed from his in-laws. He sold that movie on many times over and then bought all the rights to the Hal Roach library of Laurel and Hardy for just $1m, which were being slaughtered and ruined by TV stations across the World. He had the entire collection lovingly restored and was able to sell the rights to TV stations everywhere and at very good prices.
But the movie industry woke up big-time when the rights battle emerged over 'It's a Wonderful Life' -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Wonderful_Life#Ownership_and_copyright_issues and the long-tail was born.
P.S. 'Movies' come strictly in three acts, have 15 'beats' and 45-48 scenes. There is an A-story and a B- and a C-story. Act two ends with 'All Hope is Lost' and act three begins with the fight back. The rest are films and that is a different art form!
