Starting off with the announcement news, Arrow Video has just revealed their March release slate, which is set to include Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s The House that Screamed (1969) on Blu-ray (US, Canada, and UK) and Limited Edition Cover Blu-ray (US and UK) on 3/6, the Four Film Noir Classics: Volume 2 Blu-ray box set (includes The Suspect (1944), Sleeping City (1950), Thunder on the Hill (1951), and Six Bridges to Cross (1955) – UK only) on 3/20, and John Frankenheimer’s Black Sunday (1977) on Blu-ray (US and UK), Sammo Hung’s Knockabout (1979) on Blu-ray (US and Canada) and Limited Edition Cover Blu-ray (US), and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014) on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD (in the UK only) on 3/28.

Now for those catalog updates from our industry sources (and as always, it should be noted that none of this is official until the studios in question make their actual announcements)...

Matthew Robbins’ Dragonslayer (1981) has just been listed for pre-order on Amazon on Blu-ray on 2/21. There’s no 4K Ultra HD listed yet, but note that this film has been remastered in 4K and in fact you can now purchase it in 4K Digital on Vudu. We expect it to be available via other Digital retailers soon too, and we have reason to believe that it’s coming to 4K Ultra HD as well. The question is: Is this one of those cases where the 4K UHD comes directly with the initial remastered Blu-ray, or does it come to 4K Digital first and then the UHD disc comes several months later. We should know very soon. In the meantime, here’s the Blu-ray pre-order link.

[Editor’s Update: Amazon has just added Dragonslayer for pre-order on 4K Ultra HD from Paramount with a street date of 2/21/23! (Click here for that.) There are also listings for Blu-ray (click here) and 4K Ultra HD Steelbook (click here). Thanks to Bits reader Demetrios P. for the heads-up.]

Also, retail sources have just informed us that Paramount is now tentatively planning to release the Star Trek: The Next Generation feature films—Generations, First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis—on 4K Ultra HD a little sooner than we were expecting. Look for them to arrive just in time for “First Contact Day” 2023, better known as April 5th. This would be in lieu of the traditional “Star Trek Day” (aka September 8), which is when the Original Series films debuted in 4K. And obviously, as First Contact Day happens on a Wednesday next year, I would look for the specific street date to be 4/4.

This date is obviously relevant to the TNG films, as the in-universe First Contact Day happens in the film Star Trek: First Contact. Moreover, it makes sense from a retail-promotional strategy as well, because the new season of Star Trek: Picard—which debuts on Paramount+ on February 16th—is essentially the eighth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And new episodes will drop each week on Paramount+ leading up to the season (and series) finale on April 20th. So TNG fans should have much to rejoice in April.

And here’s word on an even bigger Paramount title: Director James Cameron has obviously been giving interviews related to this past weekend’s theatrical debut of Avatar: The Way of Water. Well, in one of those interviews with Deadline, he revealed that Titanic (1997) is getting a 4K theatrical re-release in February. This obviously means that a 4K remaster is now available, which suggests that a physical 4K Ultra HD release could be coming in 2023 as well. And this would be in addition to both The Abyss (1989) and the original Avatar (2009), which our industry sources have confirmed are coming to 4K disc next year.

Finally, we reported back on 12/7 (see our post here) that actor/director Sylvester Stallone had approved new 4K remasters of all of the Rocky films for physical Ultra HD release next year, but that the original indie distributor had backed out. Now our industry sources are suggesting that Warner Bros. will probably step in and release the discs themselves in 2023. We’ll post additional updates as they come in.

Note that we’ve updated our 4K Ultra HD Release List here at The Bits with all of this information accordingly.

Finally today, Universal has just dropped the first full trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which was shot on IMAX and is coming to theaters in July 2023. Looks impressive! Here it is…

That’s all for today. Stay tuned...!

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