But there have been some other new catalog revelations from Paramount in the last couple of days as well. Oddly, these aren’t actually announced in the sense that there’s been no official press release yet. But they’ve nearly all been listed for pre-order on Amazon and other retailers.
As you’ll see from the list below, we have the three new 4K titles next month (Top Gun, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, and Days of Thunder), along with four new deep catalog Manufactured-in-Demand Blu-ray releases (Atlantic City, Angela’s Ashes, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, and Funeral in Berlin). The other titles have all been announced previously (and we’ve certainly mentioned them here on The Bits) save for a trio of them: Newly-revealed are the next three Paramount Presents titles: Pretty in Pink (due on 6/16), Airplane (due on 6/30) and Ghost (not yet up on Amazon, but likely to be released in early July).
Here’s the full list of what Paramount has coming that’s been revealed thus far. Click on the titles to pre-order them on Amazon.com...
- Top Gun 4K – 5/19
- War of the Worlds 4K – 5/19
- Days of Thunder 4K – 5/19
- Paramount Presents: Days of Thunder – 5/19
- Paramount Presents: Flashdance – 5/19
- Atlantic City (MOD Blu-ray) – 5/26
- On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (MOD Blu-ray) – 5/26
- Angela’s Ashes (MOD Blu-ray) – 5/26
- Funeral in Berlin (MOD Blu-ray) – 5/26
- Urban Cowboy: 40th Anniversary Edition – 6/2
- Star Trek: Short Treks – 6/2
- Paramount Presents: Pretty in Pink – 6/16
- Friday the 13th: 40th Anniversary Edition Steelbook – 6/16
- Gladiator 4K Steelbook – 6/16
- Braveheart: 25th Anniversary 4K Steelbook – 6/16
- Paramount Presents: Airplane – 6/30
- Paramount Presents: Ghost – TBA July
- Top Gun 4K Steelbook – 12/8
Now, I know that a few of you may have an issue with those MOD releases not being proper replicated Blu-rays. But given the state of physical media, if MOD is what it takes to get them released in HD on disc, my feeling is that it’s better than not having them at all.
Here’s a little cover artwork for you too—the corrected Top Gun 4K Steelbook along with Airplane and Pretty in Pink...
Finally today, the results are in on my Twitter follow-up poll about the classic Star Trek films in 4K. I asked those who were interested in the films in 4K whether they would buy just the hits (say, films I, II, IV, and VI) or if they wanted to buy all ten of them (all of the Original Series and Next Generation films). And the answer by a WIDE margin was all ten. With nearly 2K people voting, the whole slate of films was preferred by a whopping 92.3% of people.
And here’s the thing to keep in mind: If new 4K scans and proper re-masters are done for each film, not only can Paramount release them on physical 4K Ultra HD and Digital 4K, they can release remastered Blu-rays versions too. And that’s REALLY important, because other than Star Trek II, all of the other films look TERRIBLE on Blu-ray. Those original discs are so scrubbed with Digital Noise Reduction that they’re unwatchable. I mean, they were bad the day they were original released. And they certainly haven’t gotten better in the years since. So there IS pent-up demand for new and properly-remastered Blu-rays of these films in addition to 4K.
By the way, don’t forget… everything I’ve mentioned above comes in addition to the studio being more willing to license out their catalog films to the likes of Criterion, Via Vision/Imprint, and Shout! and Scream Factory.
I gotta say, it’s great to be able to talk about Paramount finally stepping up their catalog Blu-ray and 4K efforts a little more. Let’s all hope the trend continues.
All right, that’s all for now.
Enjoy your Thursday and stay tuned!
(You can follow Bill on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)