Before we get into announcement news today, our friends over at Shout! Factory have posted the complete video of the Breaking News from Shout! Factory and Scream Factory panel I moderated at Comic-Con in San Diego a few weeks ago. So you can watch Brian Ward, Jeff Nelson, Jeremy Whitham, and yours truly talking about all the great content coming from the labels in the months ahead. Here’s the video. Enjoy!

We’ve also posted the weekly update of our Release Dates & Artwork section here at The Bits, featuring all the latest Blu-ray, DVD, Blu-ray 3D and 4K Ultra HD cover artwork and Amazon.com pre-order links. As always, anytime you order literally anything through our Amazon links here at the site, you’re helping to support our work and it makes a big difference in our ability to keep going. So we appreciate it very much!

And once more piece of housekeeping business: Are any of you going to the Gen Con board gaming convention in Indianapolis later this week? Our friend Chris Meadows has written The Geek’s Guide to Indianapolis for you and the Kindle eBook is free on Amazon until the end of the day today. Do if you’re headed that way, it’s handy, free, and worth your time.

All right, the big news that broke over the weekend is that director James Cameron gave an interview with the fine Arnold Fans website, where he revealed that he is finally back at work on Blu-ray releases of The Abyss and True Lies. As you know, we’ve reported here for a couple years now that 20th Century Fox had completed new transfers of both films as well as all of the work needed to compile new special features and author the Blu-rays. So it’s just been waiting on Cameron to give his thumbs-up, and as he says in the interview of the two releases: “I’m working on that. The True Lies Blu-ray and the Abyss Blu-ray have sort of fallen off my to-do list, getting one, not two, but four Avatar sequels stood up and going. But now that that has happened, I can actually take care of business. So yes, that is coming.” So there you go. Do give the complete interview a look; it’s well worth your time.

In announcement news, Warner Bros has just revealed that they’re going to be releasing the animated Batman vs. Two-Face on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital on 10/10 (SRP $24.98 and $19.98 for the discs). It will feature the voice talents of the late Adam West and William Shatner, not to mention Burt Ward, Julie Newmar, and others.

Twilight Time has just unveiled their October and November Blu-ray slates, which are set to include Wild Bill (1995), Play Dirty (1968), The Captain from Castile (1947), and The Pirates of Blood River (1962) all on 10/17, followed by Sayonara (1957), Bananas (1971), Dr. Dolittle (1967), Gidget (1959), and The Yellow Handkerchief (1977) all on 11/14.

Also, 20th Century Fox has just announced the DVD-only release of NBC’s This Is Us: The Complete First Season on 9/12. The DVD set will include all 18 episodes, plus the complete companion series The Aftershow. There’s also an offer for a free 8x8 Shutterfly Photo Book. And Universal Music is releasing a soundtrack CD of music from the first season on 9/15.

I may have posted this before, but Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s The Mummy (2017) looks ready to street on 9/12. The Blu-rays will include deleted and extended scenes, feature commentary, the Ahmanet Reborn animated graphic novel, and 8 behind-the-scenes featurettes (Cruise & Kurtzman: A Conversation, Rooted in Reality, Life in Zero-G: Creating the Plane Crash, Meet Ahmanet, Cruise in Action, Becoming Jekyll and Hyde, Choreographed Chaos, and Nick Morton: In Search of a Soul). Audio on both will be Dolby Atmos.

Speaking of Universal, the studio is now officially releasing Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 and Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, as well as Joss Whedon’s Serenity, on 4K Ultra HD on 10/17, as expected. You can see the cover artwork (and pre-order the titles on Amazon) below.

BBC Home Entertainment has set Doctor Who Special: Twice Upon a Time for Blu-ray and DVD release on 2/20/18.

And here’s a BIG one: Starz and Lionsgate will release American Gods: Season One on Blu-ray and DVD on 10/17. You can see the Blu-ray cover artwork above left and below.

All right, here’s some of that cover artwork (click on the covers to pre-order the titles on Amazon)...

Back later with that Guardians 4K review and tomorrow with more news and artwork. Stay tuned...!

- Bill Hunt

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