I’m a big Burt Reynolds fan, and one of the reasons I am is because I was raised on movies like The Cannonball Run, and the tepid, but still sorta funny sequel. The latter you can watch on Hoopla, or rent on pretty much any streaming service that allows you to rent or buy it, like Apple TV and Prime. The original, however, remains completely elusive in digital form, anywhere. As far as I’ve been able to tell, it’s never been available streaming anywhere, and for the love that is holy (and mustachioed), what’s the problem here??
As You Might Guess, It’s A Rights Issue (I Think)
It’s hard to pin down what exactly is keeping me from watching this classic ‘80s comedy. Over the years, I’ve looked into it, and I’ve never really found a satisfying, or really, a clear answer as to why you can’t even rent the movie on a streaming service. It’s almost certainly some kind of disagreement between various rights-holders. That’s never a satisfactory answer for fans. I don’t care how the rights break out. I’m literally begging whoever does to take my money. I promise, I’ll buy it the day it finally drops on streaming anywhere. I promise.
Forget watching it with something like a Disney+ subscription (it was originally produced by Golden Harvest and distributed by 20th Century Fox, which is now part of Disney). It’s not on any other streamer, either. It seems like Disney (via 20th Century) doesn’t hold the rights to the film. In fact, Warner Bros. (now part of Paramount) seems to own the franchise rights and was, at one point, developing a reboot, though that seems long dead. That might explain the hold-up in 2026, but what about all those years previous? Why is the sequel available, but the O.G. (and far superior) movie is nowhere to be seen? It’s maddening. It’s hard to drill down and identify the holdup; no one seems to have a satisfactory answer.
Just Let Me Watch!
I just want to see Reynolds in all his glory, at…well… let’s be honest, not the peak of his career, exactly, but still at his most charming. This is a movie that raced to the Top Ten at the box office in 1981, bringing in more than $70 million, and ranking the 6th most successful movie of the year, behind such legendary films as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman II (which came out the same weekend), and Stripes. All of those are on streaming somewhere, why isn’t this??
The movie has one of the most insane casts of all time. Led by Reynolds and Dom DeLuise, it also features Farrah Fawcett, Jamie Farr (in a somewhat problematic role, if I’m honest), Roger Moore (playing a version of himself who thinks he is actually James Bond and driving an Astin Martin DB5), Jackie Chan, country crooner Mel Tillis, football star Terry Bradshaw, Adrienne Barbeau, Bert Convey, and two Rat Packers, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. Then there are the cameos from stars like Bianca Jagger, Valerie Perrine (Ms. Tessmacher in Superman and Superman II), and Peter Fonda. It was directed by Hal Needham, who also directed another one of my favorite Burt Reynolds movies, Smokey and the Bandit.
Yeah, Yeah, I Know, There Are Ways To Watch
Before you get too worked up, I know there are ways to watch. You can pick it up on Amazon on physical media, for example. However, I gave up my DVD and Blu-Ray players years ago. I don’t have that “collector gene,” and once I was able to ditch my collections of physical media, like DVDs and CDs, I jumped at the chance. I never took care of my collections anyway. It was shameful. I much prefer the storage and on-demand nature of digital media. I get why people still love collecting, but that’s just not my style.
There are also plenty of illicit ways to find The Cannonball Run on the internet. I don’t like this either. I’m not going to get high and mighty about this. I don’t care what people do, but personally, I don’t like going outside of the system to track down ways to download content, be it movies, music, or video games. It’s against my personal ethos. Again, I’m not trying to preach here, live your dream, but I don’t like doing that.
You can sort of watch the movie in bits and pieces on YouTube and other sites like it, but that is a terrible way to watch a movie. So here I am. Stuck without The Cannonball Run. I can’t watch Reynolds and DeLuise bombing across the country in their ambulance, trying to win the race in one of the most underrated movies of the '80s. I can’t watch Dino and Sammy dressed as priests chasing them, or Adrienne Barbeau and Tara Buckman in their awesome Lamborghini Countach (the ultimate ‘80s wall poster car) in their spandex, charming their way through the race.
The Cannonball Run Isn’t Alone
There are other movies out there in the either that have this same struggle. One that comes to mind is another ‘80s classic, Cocoon, which is also not available anywhere. One that is especially frustrating for me is Mel Brooks’ classic Silent Movie, which I intended to watch for its 50th anniversary later this year, but nope, it’s not available anywhere. It’s been silenced for all the wrong reasons!
I totally understand that there are complexities when it comes to the rights of intellectual property, and I get why there could be anything from petty differences to serious consequences when disagreements pop up. That also just means I don’t get to watch a movie that was almost on a loop on cable when I was a kid. Whomever the powers that be may be didn’t have a problem in the past, so let's work out these problems in the 21st century.
