Look for it to include an upgrade of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (Spine #216 – 4K Ultra HD) on 6/6, followed by an upgrade of Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (Spine #37 – 4K Ultra HD) on 6/13, Joseph Losey’s The Servant (Spine #1182 – Blu-ray) and Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy (Spine #1183 – Blu-ray) on 6/20, and the previously-announced Pasolini 101 (Blu-ray) box set on 6/27.

Also today, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has officially set James Wan’s Insidious for release on 4K Ultra HD Steelbook on 6/20, complete with director-approved Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos audio.

And here’s our exclusive breaking news: I had the good fortune early this morning to attend a press event with producer Jon Landau at his Lightstorm Entertainment offices to preview some of the special features you’ll find on the impending Digital (and forthcoming Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD) release of James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water. Rest assured, I’ll talk more about those next week here at The Bits.

But here’s what’s important: I took the opportunity to ask Landau directly about the physical Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD release of James Cameron’s original Avatar (2009), along with The Abyss (1989), True Lies (1994), and Titanic (1997). And if you watch the video I shot below, you can see what he said for yourself...

Yes, Virginia... all four of those films are planned for release on 4K UHD and Blu-ray this year!

This, of course, is exactly what we’ve been saying here for months, but now you’ve got it directly from the man himself. (And remember that you heard it here first, folks; we’ve been covering the home entertainment business as industry insiders for over 25 years, and nobody has better sources than we do at The Digital Bits.)

Keep in mind, the studios in question (Disney/20th Century and Paramount) still have to complete all the remastering, authoring, QC, and replication work, and all of that has to go flawlessly for the discs to actually arrive in consumer hands before the end of the year. Therefore, street dates are still TBA/TBD. But you can now at least be reasonably confident that these titles are indeed all coming at some point in the months ahead. And yes, we have good reason to believe that at least a couple of them will include a Blu-ray 3D option.

I’d like to thank everyone at Disney, 20th Century Studios, and Lightstorm for holding a great event, and special thanks to Jon for being a mench and for taking the opportunity to actually answer my question. Fans have been waiting a long time for some of these titles to arrive on disc, so with luck we won’t have to wait much longer.

[Editor’s Note: A number of Bits readers have asked about James Cameron’s Aliens and The Terminator. I have a feeling that Aliens will be an obvious release when the Noah Hawley series arrives on FX, possibly next year. As for The Terminator, the film celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2024. So watch this space.]

Again, I’ll have more to say about the Digital release of Avatar: The Way of Water (due on 3/28) here on The Bits next week.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned!

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