In announcement news, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has just officially set Ad Astra for release on Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD on 12/17, with the Digital release due on 12/3. The 4K will include English Dolby Atmos audio. There’s no indication of HDR, so expect HDR10. Extras on the Blu-ray versions will include audio commentary by director James Gray, 2 deleted scenes with optional commentary (The Void and Epilogue), and 5 featurettes (To the Stars, A Man Named Roy, The Crew of the Cepheus, The Art of Ad Astra, and Reach for the Stars). Digital customers will get an additional featurette (Space Age: The VFX). You can see the cover artwork above left and also below.
Also, Lionsgate has just set Judy for release on Blu-ray and DVD on 12/24, with the Digital version due on 12/10. Extras will include an image gallery, the trailer, and the From the Heart: The Making of Judy featurette.
And Universal has set the Downton Abbey movie for release on Blu-ray and DVD on 12/17, with Digital due on 11/26. Extras will include audio commentary with director Michael Engler, deleted scenes, 2 Cast Conversation roundtables (Upstairs Cast and Downstairs Cast), and 5 featurettes (The Royal Visit, True to the Twenties, Welcome to Downton Abbey, The Brilliance of Julian Fellowes, and Downton Abbey Series Recap).
In other news, there’s a great piece here at Variety on a new advancement in film preservation that allows for digital restorations to be stored in glass for thousands of years. As many of you will no doubt be aware, film is a highly volatile storage medium that only lasts on the order of decades even under the best conditions—it just chemically degrades too quickly. Digital data is typically stored on magnetic disc drives or tapes and those only last for so long too. The goal is to be able to etch digital data into a medium that can last on the order of hundreds or even thousands of years without degrading and that’s what Warner is testing in conjunction with Microsoft—a technology that allows data to be etched and stored in a glass substrate that is durable and can be read accurately indefinitely. The first film they’ve stored in this way is Richard Donner’s Superman (1978). It’s a really fascinating topic and story, so do give it a read here at Variety.
Finally today, our friend Chris Gore over at Film Threat has just launched a Kickstarter to make a documentary about G4TV and Attack of the Show. Gore was a regular on the show and I even made occasional appearances there back in the day to talk about Blu-ray and DVD. You can find all the details here, so if you were a fan of the show be sure to head over there and #BackAttack!
We’ll leave you with a look at the cover artwork for Ad Astra in Blu-ray and 4K and also Downton Abbey in Blu-ray (with Amazon pre-order links if available)…
That’s all for now. Stay tuned!
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