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In announcement news today, Paramount has officially set Mark Waters’ Mean Girls (2004) and Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.’s Mean Girls (2024) for release on 4K Ultra HD on 4/30.
The former will include all of its legacy special features, along with the all-new Mean Girls: Class of ‘04 retrospective featurette with screenwriter Tina Fey and the cast.
The more recent reboot will include 3 featurettes (A New Age of Mean Girl, Song and Dance, and The New Plastics), a gag reel, the Not My Fault music video, an extended scene, and a Sing-Along option.
Severin Films has set Michele Soavi’s Cemetery Man (1994) for release on 4K Ultra HD on 4/30 in a standard edition available exclusively on the Severin Films website (click here for the link). It will include Dolby Vision HDR, Dolby Atmos audio, audio commentary with Michele Soavi and Gianni Romoli, 3 featurettes (At the Graves, Of Love and Death, and She), an archival making-of featurette, and both the Italian and English trailers.
In other news today, pre-order listings on the Gruv website (here and here) have confirmed that Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment is preparing to release John G. Avildsen’s Rocky V (1990) and Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa (2006) in 4K Ultra HD in the months ahead (street date is still TBA). Both will feature Steelbook packaging, and Rocky Balboa will include a new Director’s Cut as well as the Theatrical Version. Unfortunately, there’s still no official word here in the States on whether the studio plans to fix the various audio and picture errors that plagued their previous Rocky: The Knockout Collection 4K box set.
For the record, those errors included missing original mono audio on the Rocky 4K (it was a 5.1 fold-down instead), audio on the Rocky II 4K that was pitched 2-4% too low, foreign language audio on the Rocky III 4K that was also pitched 2-4% too low, and a brief aspect ratio shift on the Rocky IV 4K.
Also for the record, we’ve heard that Warner’s international operation did inform international retailers that no fixes for these issues would be forthcoming because “MGM can’t find the original assets” in their vaults, but excuse that doesn’t exactly hold water. The correct mono audio can be found on previous Blu-ray releases and a pitch problem can be easily correct via software in mastering. But such QC issues seem to be par for the course with Warner Bros. catalog releases these days. (Think the Superman 4K box set, the Fleischer Superman animated Blu-ray release, etc.)
In any case, here’s what the new cover Steelbook artwork looks like...
Also today, director Guillermo del Toro has confirmed on Twitter/X that he’s nearly done working on new 4K remasters of Crimson Peak (2015), Cronos (1993), Blade II (2002), and Mimic (1997). Crimson Peak is already set for physical 4K UHD release by Arrow on 5/21, but it seems safe to assume that Cronos, Blade II, and Mimic will all be forthcoming in the next several months (likely from Criterion, Warner Bros. and either Lionsgate or Paramount in the case of Mimic). Rest assured, we’ll keep you up to date as we learn anything more.
[Editor’s Note: Mimic will be coming from Kino Lorber Studio Classics, via license from Paramount which controls the Miramax catalog. Thanks to a couple of Bits readers who reminded me that KLSC had already announced that the tile was “coming soon” to 4K.]
And Vinegar Syndrome has announced a few more new titles, including—but not limited to—Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Daniel Isn’t Real (2019) on Blu-ray, and Alessandro Capone’s Witch Story (1989), Lewis Teague’s Navy Seals (1990), and Robert Clouse’s China O’Brien 1 & 2 (1990-91) in 4K Ultra HD. You can pre-order them all here.
We’ll leave you today with a look at the cover artwork for several Blu-ray and 4K titles that are now or newly available for pre-order on Amazon.com by clicking on the covers...
Stay tuned...
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