Wow… what do you know? We have a rare Rumor Mill update for you today! We’re so deep into the Blu-ray format now, there just aren’t all that many stories that really merit a separate Rumor Mill post. I mean, after the Star Wars films finally hit BD, the biggest topic of Rumor Mill discussion was made moot! But it turns out there are still a few titles worth talking about here.
Anyway, we’ve been hearing for over a year and a half now from our industry (and studio) sources that Fox was slowly and quietly working to bring James Cameron’s True Lies and The Abyss to Blu-ray Disc at long last. Back in September we reported that Cameron was finally taking time from deep sea diving and planning Avatar 2 to work on a new HD transfer and master of the films for Blu-ray, but that actual releases were at least 12 or more months away.
Well… now we have reports that actress Eliza Dushku was on Chris Hardwick’s The Nerdist program on BBC America on Saturday night. When asked by the host what she’s been up to, she apparently blurted out that she’d just finished participating in work on a True Lies Blu-ray. You’ll recall she played Harry Tasker’s daughter in the film – one of her early roles. (Thanks to all the Bits readers who e-mailed to report this!) So it seems that work continues on True Lies at least, and probably The Abyss too. As to when they might hit store shelves, our best information says next year – 2014 just happens to be the 25th Anniversary of The Abyss and the 20th for True Lies.
Speaking of Fox, we’ve also learned that the post facility HTV is involved in the effort to bring The X-Files TV series to Blu-ray Disc. Which is good in that it’s further confirmation that The X-Files is coming to Blu-ray (something we first revealed here in The Rumor Mill back in November)… but it’s bad because we’ve also heard there’s some up-conversion going on of original footage (rather than a full HD upgrade and restoration). As it happens, HTV was the company that did the remastering work on CBS’ Star Trek: The Next Generation – Season Two (which really wasn’t up to the quality standard set by CBS Digital’s in-house team on Seasons One or Three). So draw your own conclusions. Let’s hope that all the series’ dark, gritty goodness isn’t just digitally scrubbed away. [Editor's Note: I should be clear, it's not a complete upconversion. Like Star Trek, all the original camera negative is being rescanned in high resolution. However the original VFX work was done in low resolution and much of this is simply being upconverted rather than being re-rendered. And any stock footage used – shots of the Hoover Building for example – is being upconverted.]
Finally, while we’re talking CBS… we’ve had additional confirmation that the company is working to being more catalog TV series to Blu-ray, following the success of Star Trek: The Original Series and The Next Generation, including David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. More on that in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned…
- Bill Hunt