so why did they keep the production amount so low with each movie/episode? i mean wouldn't it make sense to release laserdiscs in large quantities rather than small amounts? i mean if they went to the trouble of pressing so many different movies onto LD you would think they would make large quantities, even if the demand is low the cost of video transfering and remastering must be alot more then the cost of pressing? I don't see why they couldn't have pressed more copies of each title if they went to the trouble of making them in the first place, isn't that a more logical business practice? What were the largest batches? ive heard numbers like 2 or 3 thousand having been the most

Maybe it was easy to switch out the presses, kind of like LP records. You would switch these out as demand needed. They wouldn't do 10,000 pressings if they new they would only sell 2,000. Also, storage and transport of laserdiscs could have been very expensive so maybe they wouldn't want to keep a large warehouse of discs but rather just do new pressings as needed and ship them out immediately. Just a guess.

For some titles the quantities pressed were much higher, got an article with interview of the distributer where for example is referred to "Cinquime Element", the french release of "Fifth element", 30.000 copies were sold of the French release and 5.000 of the Original release.

In US, I think all the common titles like Titanic, Independance Day, ..... are pressed in very high quantities.

First of all there was the pre-ordering which gave an idea of the volume, based on this the production was started in batches.
Also know you can not press limitless from one stamper, only few thousand can be made, than a new stamper had to be used.

In Germany there were a number of releases with only 250, 500 or 1000 copies (ASTRO)

Below the example of a 250 copy ASTRO release at 230DM aprox 160US$ being even a 4 disc release, bringing it to 40US$ per disc.
Just found an interview with Oliver Krekel (ASTRO), he refers to a cost of 10US$ per disc manufactured by Pioneer Japan for a batch run of 1000 copies.

But I also would like to have some idea on volumes, may be Disclord could help us here.