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It goes without saying that with the decline in Internet advertising, not to mention the recent decline in Amazon Affiliate revenue, it’s become very challenging to keep a long-running website going financially. We made the decision long ago that the best way to support physical media would be to ensure that our work on The Digital Bits would be available free for everyone to read—always. So all of our writing, all of our industry reporting, our disc reviews, our invaluable insights from sources, our columns—none of you have ever paid a dime to read it. The Bits essentially publishes a weekly magazine on the Internet, and we’ve given it away for free for twenty-seven years! I don’t know how each of you makes a living these days, but I bet none of you have ever been asked to work at your own jobs for free for nearly three decades. Yet that’s essentially what we’ve done for this hobby that we all love so much.

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Now then... we’ve got a bunch of really great catalog 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray news to report today here at the site!

First, Paramount has officially set Howard Deutch’s Pretty in Pink (1986) for 4K Ultra HD release on 2/11. This is another great 1980s teen classic produced by John Hughes. It will feature Dolby Vision HDR and a new Filmmaker Focus featurette.

Kino Lorber Studio Classics has just revealed that they’re releasing Ken Russell’s Whore (1991), Robert Mulligan’s The Spiral Road (1962), Denis Sanders’ Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), and Richard Thorpe’s That Funny Feeling (1965) on Blu-ray on 1/14, with George Seaton’s Teacher’s Pet (1958) and Melville Shavelson’s Houseboat (1958) set to follow on the format on 1/28.

Newly-revealed as coming soon to Blu-ray from the company are Elio Petri’s The 10th Victim (1965), Franc Roddam’s The Lords of Discipline (1983), and John G. Avildsen’s Save the Tiger (1973). And Phillip Noyce’s The Bone Collector (1999) has also been revealed as coming soon to 4K Ultra HD.

Here’s something fun: We’ve confirmed that Disney has completed a new 4K remaster of Michael Bay’s Armageddon (1998)—no kidding!—and they’ll be screening it at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles on 12/6 as part of An Evening with Diane Warren. Click here for the details on that. We expect that it’s very likely this film will be released on physical 4K Ultra HD in 2025, either from Disney or perhaps licensed to a boutique label (and Criterion makes the most sense, given that they’ve released the film on DVD previously).

Also today, a photograph of what appears to be an internal Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment PowerPoint presentation as been circulating online over the weekend, and it shows as-yet-unannounced street dates for a few 4K catalog titles planned for the first half of 2025. The key thing is, this information syncs up with information I’ve had from multiple industry sources for a while now, so I believe it’s the real deal. As such, we know that WBDHE has already announced David Fincher’s Se7en (1995) for release on 4K UHD on 1/7/25. But we also now know that the planned street date for Francis Lawrence’s Constantine (2005) is 2/18, while the planned date for Miloš Forman’s Amadeus (1984) is 2/25. And these dates are further out (and thus almost certainly subject to change), but you can also tentatively look forward to Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon (1987) to arrive on 4K on 5/20, with a long-awaited James Bond 007: Sean Connery Collection expected to follow on 6/3. And the latter would be a 6-film set that includes Terence Young’s Dr. No (1963), From Russia with Love (1963), and Thunderball (1965), Guy Hamilton’s Goldfinger (1964) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971), and Lewis Gilbert’s You Only Live Twice (1967)—probably the same Lowry Digital 4K restorations that are already available Digitally. Again, all of those details are subject to change.

Meanwhile, our friends at The British Film Institute (BFI) have also set Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos (1992) for release in 4K Ultra HD on 2/10, followed by a double feature of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962) in 4K UHD on 3/17. Both packages will include Dolby Vision HDR.

And finally today, Via Vision’s Imprint Films label has just revealed its February 2025 Blu-ray release slate, which is set to include Lamont Johnson’s Lipstick (1976), Daniel Petrie’s The Betsy (1978) and Lifeguard (1976), Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam (1972), William Wyler’s The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970), and James Goldstone’s Swashbuckler (1976). Look for all of those to street on 2/26.

We’ll leave you today with a look at the cover artwork for The Penguin in 4K, plus Pretty in Pink, Snowpiercer, and Willow, as well as the now-in-theaters Wicked: Part One and Gladiator II (all with pre-order Amazon links if available)...

Stay tuned!

(You can follow Bill on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)