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Monday, 10 March 2025
My Two Cents
Monday, 03 February 2025 15:36

Universal sets Wolf Man for 4K, plus the Saturn Awards, Mufasa, September 5 & more announcements!

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Wolf Man (4K Ultra HD Steelbook)

Afternoon, Bits readers... and welcome to the first week of February!

Tim is taking a much-deserved week off to spend time with his family, but we’ll have plenty of news content here and maybe a review or two as well in the meantime.

Last night, my wife Sarah and I attended The 52nd Annual Saturn Awards here in Los Angeles, produced by The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. It was a lovely evening, a chance to catch up with industry friends, brush elbows with genre celebs (think Nicolas Cage, William Shatner, Mark Hamill, Peter Weller, Christopher Lloyd, Laurence Fishburne, tons of Star Trek cast members, etc), and to celebrate great work in genre entertainment. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two took home the Best Science Fiction Film award, as it well should! Denis himself also won for Best Film Director—a nice show of appreciation for the filmmaker, especially given that he wasn’t nominated for Best Director by the Academy this year, despite Dune: Part Two being nominated for the Best Picture. Go figure.

In the Home Media categories, the key winners were:

  • Best Classic Film Home Media Release: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)
  • Best 4K Home Media Release: Saw X (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
  • Best Film Home Media Collection: Batman: 85th Anniversary Collection (Warner Home Video)
  • Best Television Home Media Release: Star Wars: Andor – The Complete First Season (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

We actually had the good fortune to be seated at the same table as Kino Lorber’s VP of Acquisitions and Business Development, Frank Trazi, who—since he lives on the East Coast—I hadn’t had the chance to meet before. But trust me when I say that Frank is good people, and that KLSC’s fantastic slate of upcoming Blu-ray and 4K titles is in great hands with him. You can watch his new podcast, Shelf Space with Kino Lorber, here on YouTube.

In any case, the event was great fun and it was streamed live online here and on Roku. You can read the complete list of winners here at Deadline today. And all of us here at The Bits would like to offer our congratulations to Frank and everyone at KLSC for their win for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (you can see their actual Saturn statue below the break), to our friend Cliff Stephenson and everyone at Lionsgate for their 4K win with Saw X, and to the disc teams at Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for their wins as well!. [Read on here...]

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Frank Tarzi accepts the Saturn Award for Kino Lorber Studio Classics

Kino Lorber Studio Classic's Saturn Award for Best Classic Film Home Media Release

Cliff Stephenson accepts the Saturn Award for Lionsgate Home Entertainment

The big title announcement news today is that Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has officially set Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man (2025) for Blu-ray, DVD, 4K Ultra HD, and 4K Steelbook release on 3/18, with the Digital version available starting tomorrow. Extras will include audio commentary with Whannell and 4 featurettes (Unleashing a Monster, Designing Wolf Man, Hands on Terror, and Nightmares and Soundscapes). The 4K disc will be 66GB, with HDR10 and Dolby Atmos audio. You can see the cover artwork above left.

Also, Disney has announced Mufasa: The Lion King for Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD Steelbook release on 4/1, with the Digital version due to become available on 2/18. Extras will include a sing-along viewing option, outtakes, 4 deleted scenes, and 4 featurettes (Finding Milele: The Making of Mufasa: The Lion King, Songs of the Savanna, Ostrich Eggs with Timon & Pumbaa, and Protect the Pride), as well as the I Always Wanted a Brother music video. Again, the 4K disc will be 66GB, with Dolby Atmos audio and Dolby Vision/HDR10 high dynamic range.

In other news, Paramount has set September 5 for Blu-ray release on 2/18, with the Digital release expected tomorrow. Extras will include 5 featurettes (Remaking Broadcast History, A Meticulous Undertaking, On the Global Stage, Screen Actors Guild Q&A, and Producers Guild of America Q&A).

Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment has also just released the Cartoon Network’s animated Craig of the Creek: The Complete Series on Digital.

And our friends at Kino Lorber Studio Classic have just revealed that Edward Ludwig’s The Man Who Reclaimed His Head (1934) is coming soon to Blu-ray, as is the Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XXVI Blu-ray box set, which will include Anthony Mann’s Dr. Broadway (1942), Charles Barton’s Smooth as Silk (1946), and Elliot Nugent’s The Great Gatsby (1949).

Finally, we have a quick update on titles announced last week: Sony’s new Stripes 4K UHD Steelbook will include both the Theatrical and Extended versions of the film in 4K with Dolby Vision HDR. Each version will also include Dolby Atmos and English 5.1 DTS-HD MA sound mixes, and the Theatrical version will also include the original mono audio. Extras on the 4K disc will include the theatrical trailer and 40 Years of Stripes with Bill and Ivan, reuniting Bill Murray and director Ivan Reitman with a guest appearance by cinematographer Bill Butler. The package will also include both versions of the film on Blu-ray (minus the Atmos mixes), plus all the legacy special features. Street date again is 4/29.

And Sony’s new Gandhi 4K Steelbook, which streets the same day, will include the film spread across two 4K discs with Dolby Vision HDR, as well as English Dolby Atmos, 5.1 DTS-HD MA, and 2.0 audio. The only extra on the 4K discs will be theatrical trailers. But the package will also include two Blu-rays, one with the film, an introduction and audio commentary by director Richard Attenborough, and the Gandhi’s Legacy picture-in-graphics track, as well as a second Blu-ray with all of the remaining legacy features.

That’s all for now! Stay tuned...

- Bill Hunt

(You can follow Bill on social media on Twitter, BlueSky, and Facebook, and also here on Patreon)

 

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