By the way, per Deadline today, Star Wars: The Force Awakens might actually hit a $250 million total for its domestic opening weekend and $528 million global. That’s a juggernaut and would officially blow away every box office record currently in the books. We’re going to look back one day soon and think of Disney’s $4 billion purchase price for Star Wars as the steal of all time.

In official announcement news, Criterion has revealed its March Blu-ray slate, which is set to include Jacques Rivette’s Paris Belongs to Us (Cat #802 – Blu-ray, DVD, and Hulu Plus) on 3/8, John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (Cat #803 – Blu-ray and DVD) on 3/15, Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (Cat #804 – Blu-ray and DVD) on 3/22, and Les Blank’s Leon Russell: A Poem Is a Naked Person (Cat #805 – Blu-ray, DVD, and iTunes) and Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (Cat #374 – Blu-ray and DVD) on 3/29.

Also, HBO has set Strike Back: The Final Season for Blu-ray and DVD release on 3/1.

Cohen Media Group has set Mustang for Blu-ray and DVD release on 4/12.

And Alchemy and Millennium have set Antoine Bardou-Jacquet’s Moonwalkers for Blu-ray and DVD release on 2/23. That’s the dark comedy about a con to convince the CIA that they’ve hired Stanley Kubrick to fake the Moon landing.

By the way, this is completely BD unrelated, but if you’re a spaceflight enthusiast, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is going to try to launch their upgraded Falcon 9 rocket this afternoon and then land the first stage back at Cape Canaveral. Launch is set for about 5 PM Pacific (if all goes well) and you can watch online here.

We’ll leave you with a bunch of new Blu-ray cover artwork, including temp art for some of the titles mentioned above (with Amazon.com pre-order links if available)...

I’ll be back as soon as possible with that X-Files BD review. Stay tuned...

- Bill Hunt