ClassicFlix has informed us that 10 titles they licensed from MGM in 2017 (and released on Blu-ray) are going out of print. However, the studio has limited stock on hand, so visit them here if you’re interested. The titles in question are: Along Came Jones (1945), Casanova Brown (1944), Crime of Passion (1957), Down Three Dark Streets (1954), Five Steps to Danger (1956), He Walked by Night: Special Edition (1948), It’s About Time: The Complete Series (1966-67), The Killer is Loose (1956), The Noose Hangs High (1948), and Tomorrow is Forever (1946).
Lionsgate has set Grant Johnson’s Agent Game coming on Blu-ray and DVD on 5/24. The film stars Mel Gibson.
The Warner Archive Collection will release Victor Fleming’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) on Blu-ray on 5/17. They’ll also release William Belasco’s The Carey Treatment (1972) on Blu-ray on 5/10.
Magnolia will release John Andreas Andersen’s The Burning Sea (2021) on Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD on 5/24.
Also in 4K Ultra HD news, a German distributor called Studio Hamburg Enterprises is releasing a new UHD edition of Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) on 5/13. Unfortunately, it will only feature German intertitles.
Now then, we’ve gotten a LOT of questions from readers as to when Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will begin sending out fixed Mad Max 2 4K UHD replacement discs (correcting the audio issue). We’ve been trying to get a straight answer out of the studio for a couple of weeks now, and the moment we hear back from them we’ll let you know. They were originally supposed to be sent out in mid-January, then February, then the date slipped to March, and now we’re obviously about to start April. We can confirm that the discs are done. Copies of the Mad Max Anthology 4K set (and also Mad Max: The Road Warrior) now appearing in stores should all be the corrected versions. You can identify the corrected Mad Max Anthology 4K set by looking for a white sticker over the old UPC with the new code of 8-83929-79000-5 (the old one—with the bad disc—was 8-83929-77803-4). Likewise, you can identify the corrected Mad Max: The Road Warrior 4K by the new UPC code 8-83929-78999-3 (the old one—with the bad disc—was 8-83929-68905-7). And to get right down to details, the new Mad Max: The Road Warrior 4K includes the following number on the edge of the disc: 2000175308 (the bad disc was labeled: 2000169323). So at least now you can identify the correct disc in the wild, and know you have the corrected version.
The question remains then, why is it taking so long for WBHE to get themselves organized to send out the replacement discs? And while we don’t yet have an official answer, the unofficial “inside baseball” answer is that their formerly excellent customer service department was basically gutted by AT&T layoffs. And because of the still ongoing Warner Bros. Discover merger (which was only just approved by shareholders on 3/11), they’re having trouble rebuilding their customer service team. Once the merger is complete, the studio will be better able to start getting their ducks lined up properly. And hopefully, they’ll find an interim solution in the next few weeks that will allow them to start shipping out those replacement discs ASAP. In the meantime, if you’re not getting a response to your emails, that’s why. And if you’re getting frustrated by it all, believe me I understand. As soon as we hear anything official on this from the studio—or get any kind of word from readers that the discs are starting to go out—we’ll let you know here and I’ll post it on my social media as well (you can follow me here on Twitter—that is literally the first place I’ll post the news).
And if you’re only now just hearing about the audio issue on the Mad Max: The Road Warrior 4K disc—and you’re wondering how you can get your fixed disc (eventually)—refer to this post from The Bits back in November of 2021 which has the still relevant instructions.
In other news today, Lucasfilm and Disney+ have announced that they’re delaying the premiere of Star Wars: Obi-Wan from Wednesday 5/25 to Friday 5/27. But the good news is that the first two episodes of the six-episode limited series will drop together now.
Finally today, Paramount has released a new trailer for Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick, which arrives in theaters on 5/27. And darned if it doesn’t look like it might actually be worth the wait (and worth seeing on the biggest possible screen). Here’s a look...
All right, we’ll leave you today with a look at the cover artwork for a few of the titles mentioned above, with Amazon.com pre-order links...
Stay tuned...
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