In release news today, Paramount has officially set Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street for release on 4K Ultra HD on 12/14, as expected. You can see the cover artwork at left and also below (and you can pre-order the title on Amazon below as well).
Meanwhile, the Disney Movie Club has revealed a trio of great Disney live-action catalog titles that they’re bringing to Blu-ray: The Watcher in the Woods (includes a never-before-seen alternate opening), Flight of the Navigator, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. These should be shipping soon from DMC if they aren’t already. Thanks to Bits reader Aaron J. for the heads-up!
In other news today, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has informed us that they’re revising the street dates for a few of their biggest 4K releases in the 4th quarter due to unexpected “supply chain delays.” So the Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection: Volume 2 box is now set for release on 10/12 (delayed from 9/14). The Underworld: Limited Edition 5-Movie Collection now streets on 10/26 (delayed from 10/5). And The Guns of Navarone now streets on 11/12 (delayed from 10/12). Adjust your plans accordingly.
Given this announcement, and the fact that Paramount is having trouble shipping enough copies of the Star Trek: The Original 4-Movie Collection 4K Ultra HD set to meet demand (Bits readers who have pre-ordered it from Amazon, Best Buy and elsewhere are suffering shipping delays), it seems likely that most of the studios are having replication and distribution issues right now (due to the limited replication capacity available and also pandemic-related delays) which will likely persist through the end of the year.
Also today, we’ve learned that Koch Films is releasing Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997) and In the Mood for Love (2000) on 4K Ultra HD in Germany on 11/25. Do keep in mind however that these discs may not have English subtitles. We’ll try to confirm the presence or lack of English subs as soon as we can.
Now then, I was invited over the weekend to join my old friend Robert Meyer Burnett as a guest on his Let’s Get Physical Media YouTube show with Dieter Bastian. So we had a great time yesterday talking about Blu-ray, DVD, 4K Ultra HD, catalog releases, indie distributors, Star Trek, and much more—the discussion ran for over three hours in all! We even managed to get our friend George Feltenstein (who’s now back at Warner Bros. Home Entertainment!) to join the conversation by phone late in the episode. You can watch the whole thing right here and I think you’ll enjoy it...
And with that, I’m now officially free to (finally) to confirm the fact that George Feltenstein has indeed been hired back at Warner Bros. Home Entertainment to work on their catalog titles and to manage the Warner Archive Collection once again! I’ve known George for over 20 years, going all the way back to the early days of The Digital Bits. He’s one of the most knowledgeable people you’ll ever meet in this industry on the subject of classic film, and he’s also one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet period. I’m pleased to call him a friend and I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to say this: Welcome back, George! Thanks for everything you do on behalf of Blu-ray, DVD, 4K, and cinema fans everywhere!
All right, finally today... here’s something for you fellow spaceflight fans who live in Southern California: SpaceX is launching a Falcon 9 tonight from Vandenberg SFB at 8:55pm Pacific (live stream will be here). So if you live in SoCal (it might be visible from parts of Nevada and Arizona too), go outside at about 8:50 and look up at the west-northwest sky for 10 minutes or so. If the launch happens as planned, in the next few minutes afterwards you’re in for a helluva pretty sight. The rocket will be visible all the way to orbit in the darkening sky, and the launch plume will be backlit by the setting sun the whole time. Trust me, it’s worth seeing. It’ll look something like this (picture by Danny Sullivan)...
We’ll leave you today with a look at the cover artwork for a few new Blu-ray and 4K titles (with Amazon.com pre-order links if available)...
Back tomorrow. Stay tuned!
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