Now then... in announcement news today, Paramount has just made their 5/19 4K release of Top Gun, Days of Thunder, and War of the Worlds official with an actual press release, though we’ve all known that they were coming for a long while now.
But the latest information is that the newly-remastered Top Gun also arrives on Digital on 5/13 (aka Top Gun Day). Both the Digital and physical 4K version will include “a brand-new featurette that explores the film’s legacy and enduring popularity through new interviews with Tom Cruise, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and members of the cast of Top Gun: Maverick, including John Hamm, Miles Teller, Glen Powell, and more. Fans can also enjoy a retrospective segment from 2016 looking back at 30 years of Top Gun. Additional previously released bonus content on the disc includes commentary by producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Tony Scott, co-screenwriter Jack Epps, Jr. and naval experts; Danger Zone: The Making of Top Gun; a look inside the real Top Gun; original theatrical promotional material; music videos, and more.” That includes legacy bonus features (many of them produced by our old friend and documentarian extraordinaire Charles de Lauzirika).
Days of Thunder will also include “a brand-new featurette looking back on the production with Bruckheimer” plus legacy extras. And War of the Worlds will carry over previous extras too.
And of course we’ll have in-depth reviews here at The Bits as soon as we get our hands on the disc. Meanwhile, you can pre-order them here...
Now then... our friends at Scream Factory have just officially announced the details of their 6/16 Blu-ray release of Dave Parker’s The Hills Run Red. This baby is going to be stacked with more special features than any indie film has any right to have, all produced by Parker and our old friend Robert Meyer Burnett. So here’s what you’ll get...
- NEW Audio Commentary with Director Dave Parker and Patrick Bromley of “F This Movie” Podcast
- NEW Audio Commentary with Director Dave Parker and Filmmakers Joe Lynch and Adam Green
- NEW Deep in the Red: An Interview with Writer David J. Schow and Director Dave Parker
- NEW Running to the Hills: An Interview with Executive Producer Erik Olsen
- NEW Musical Terror: An Interview with Composer Frederik Wiedmann
- NEW Friday the 13th, June 2008: A Tour of the Set with Director Dave Parker (Never Before Seen)
- NEW The Hills Are Alive... With the Sound of Improv: Interviews with the Cast (Never Before Seen)
- NEW William Sadler As Wilson Wyler Concannon: An Interview with the Actor from the Set (Never Before Seen)
- NEW Janet Montgomery As Serina: An Interview with the Actress from the Set (Never Before Seen)
- NEW Sophie Monk As Alexa Concannon: An Interview with the Actress from the Set (Never Before Seen)
- NEW Tad Hilgenbrink As Tyler: An Interview with the Actor from the Set (Never Before Seen)
- NEW Alex Wyndham As Lalo: An Interview with the Actor from the Set (Never Before Seen)
- NEW Interview with Producer Robert Meyer Burnett from the Set (Never Before Seen)
- NEW Interview with Production Designer Antonello Rubino from the Set (Never Before Seen)
- NEW Production Scrapbook
- NEW Original Animatic for the Proof of Concept Trailer
- NEW Proof of Concept Trailer
- Original Audio Commentary with Director Dave Parker, Writer David J. Schow and Producer Robert Meyer Burnett
- It’s Not Real Until You Shoot It: The Making of The Hills Run Red
- Trailer
LOL. That’s like 6.5 hours of special features for an 81 minute movie! Is it self-indulgent? Sure! Is it also outstanding? Absolutely! We can’t wait to get our hands on it. You can pre-order the disc here...
Also today, Lionsgate has set Project Blue Book: Season 2 for DVD only release on 6/16.
Lionsgate is also releasing 2 Minutes of Fame on DVD, Digital, and On Demand that same day.
And Arrow Video has announced its May Blu-ray slate, which is set to include Blood Tide, White Fire, The Woman, and Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, Tokyo Fist, Bullet Ballet, and the home video debut of Tsukamoto’s latest effort, Killing) all on 5/26.
Here’s something interesting: FUNimation is bringing 30 anime films to Bigscreen VR, which allows you watch films using virtual reality headsets (like Oculus, HTC, Valve, StreamVR, etc) as though you’re in a virtual theater—it recreates the bigscreen theater experience. You can read more about it here.
Finally, as I mentioned yesterday, I ran a poll on Twitter to see how the COVID pandemic stay-at-homing was changing people’s movie viewing habits. And the results are interesting, if not surprising. 900 people responded, and the upshot is that 48% of you said you’re buying physical movie discs. Another 13% said they were buying more Digital movies, while still 19% more said they were buying more discs and Digital movies. Only about 20% said the pandemic was having no impact on their movie habits. Pretty fascinating.
I’ve long maintained that there were three reasons why DVD became as big as it was. The first was that it was just a quantum leap in home entertainment technology and people were already in love with the 5-inch disc format thanks to CDs. The second was the concurrent rise of Amazon.com and Netflix, which meant that—really for the first time in history—almost any movie you wanted to see was suddenly just a couple of mouse clicks and two-days mailing time away by USPS, including a vary array of titles most people had never been exposed to before. But the third reason—and this is the key point here—was 9/11. After those terrible events, lots of people who would otherwise have spent money traveling stayed at home, and shifted those dollars into creating DVD home theaters and buying lots of discs. It really was, in many ways, a perfect storm. And it’s one of the reason why that success of DVD is unlikely to be replicated in our lifetimes. Still, the pandemic is clearly causing a surge in home entertainment spending—including both discs and Digital. And it will be interesting to see what the lasting impact of that is in the months and years ahead.
All right, that’s all for today. Everyone stay safe!
And stay tuned...
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