More new announcements: Expend4bles, Saw X, Varsity Blues, Planet Earth III, Peter Gabriel’s i/o, Ultraseven 55th & much more!

Wednesday, 18 October 2023 16:39

More new announcements: Expend4bles, Saw X, Varsity Blues, Planet Earth III, Peter Gabriel’s i/o, Ultraseven 55th & much more!

by Bill Hunt

All right, believe it or not, even after the insanity that’s been the last couple of days, we still have a bit more new release news to catch you all up on here at The Bits...

First things first… Lionsgate has officially set The Expendables 4, aka Expend4bles, for release on Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD on 11/21. There will also a trio of retail exclusive versions, including an Amazon 4K with lenticular cover, a Best Buy 4K Steelbook, and a Walmart Steelbook 4-Film 4K Collection. All 4K versions of Expend4bles will offer Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos audio on a 100GB disc. Extras on the Blu-ray and 4K SKUs will include audio commentary with director Scott Waugh, 2 featurettes (Bigger, Bolder, Badder: The Expendables in Action and More Than a Team: New Blood Meets Old Blood), plus the film’s theatrical trailer. You can see the cover artwork at left and also below.

Lionsgate has also set Kevin Greutert’s Saw X for release on Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD on 11/21. Look for HDR10 and Dolby Atmos on the 4K SKU. Extras will include audio commentary (with director-editor Kevin Greutert, cinematographer Nick Matthews, and production designer Anthony Stabley), the 6-part Reawakening documentary (includes I Want to Play a Game: Bleeding New Life into the Saga, This Time It’s Personal: Characters and Casting, Another Time, Another Place: Locations and Cinematography, There Will Be Blood: Production Design and Make-up, Leave Nothing to Chance: Post-Production, and Live or Die: Release and Legacy), 2 additional featurettes (Drawing Inspiration: Illustrated Scene Breakdowns with Kevin Greutert and Make-Up Department Trap Tests), deleted scenes, and the film’s theatrical trailer. Again, you’ll find the cover art below. [Read on here...]

We should also note this afternoon that Paramount’s new 4K Ultra HD Titanic: Limited-Edition Collector’s Boxed Set is now officially available for pre-order on Amazon.com (click here) or on the image below. The SRP is currently $153.99, but note that the usual Amazon sale price is expected to kick in soon. Typically, it takes a few days after the title first gets listed for the discount to appear. But Amazon Prime guarantees that whatever the price you pre-order at, you’ll get that lower price when it kicks in. Here’s a look at the contents...

Speaking of Paramount, the studio has also now set Brian Robbins’ Varsity Blues (1999) for 4K Ultra HD release on 1/9/24.

Documentary fans will be pleased to learn that the BBC is going to be releasing their long-awaited Planet Earth III documentary series on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD in the UK on 1/8/24.

In other news, about a month ago we mentioned here at The Bits that Giuliano Carnimeo’s gaillo/thriller The Case of the Bloody Iris (1972) (aka Perchè quelle strane gocce di sungue sul corpo di Jennifer?) is currently being worked on for a new remastered Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD release in the months ahead. Well, sources have informed us that a brand new 4K scan of the film has been completed and it’s currently undergoing careful digital restoration and color correction. It apparently requires major restoration in some areas because of physical and chemical damage to the original camera negative which requires a lot of manual frame-by-frame work.

We’ve learned that the release will be coming from a new label called Celluloid Dreams. And one of the company’s chief ambitions is never to run their transfers through an “autograder” as some other studios do, a process that results in transfers where the colors are simply neutralized and very different from the way the original theatrical prints looked. The team at Celluloid Dreams is adamant about properly correcting each shot with the goal of restoring the original theatrical look, wherever possible.

We’ve also learned that this new release will include some of the legacy bonus features, along with exciting new content as well. We’ll share more when we’re able to, but if you’re a fan of the film, it certainly sounds like this should be a special release.

Also today, our friends at Koch/Plaion in Germany have delayed their wide 4K UHD/Blu-ray reissue of the superlative David Lynch’s Dune (1984): Ultimate Edition. The 7-disc set—which includes the Theatrical Cut in 4K and BD plus (exclusively) the Extended TV Version and Spicediver Cut on BD, and the extended feature-length documentary, but not the deluxe packaging and swag—was originally intended to street on 10/26. But due to manufacturing delays, they’ve delayed it until 3/14/24. So adjust your plans accordingly. Here’s a link to the Plaion website, where you can pre-order the title. It was also available here on Amazon.de for a while, but they appear to have taken it down until the delays get straightened out (be sure to keep checking back for it). Speaking personally, I have that original Ultimate Edition and trust me when I say that it’s worth every damn penny. The 4K scan is superlative, as is the full-length The Sleeper Must Awaken documentary, and having that Spicediver Cut on Blu-ray is icing on the cake.

Synapse Films has set Marcel Walz’s Blood Feast (2016) for 4K Ultra HD release on 1/16.

88 Films will bow the wide-release version of their existing Police Story 3: Super Cop 4K Ultra HD on 1/16 as well.

On the anime front, Mill Creek Entertainment has set a new Ultraseven 55: Anniversary Anthology Collector’s Set for release on Blu-ray on 11/14. This will include 55 of the best Ultraseven episodes and specials spanning 55 years of the Ultraman franchise—some 27 hours of content in all—along with a 16-page booklet.

Also, GKids has announced that the voice cast for their English-dubbed version of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (aka How Do You Live?) will include Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill, Robert Pattinson, and Florence Pugh. The film will arrive in theaters in the US nationwide on 12/8 in both Japanese and English language versions. Look for it to arrive on Blu-ray and DVD sometime early in 2024 from GKids via Shout! Factory. You can read more via GKids’ official website here.

And for you music fans today, Peter Gabriel has just announced his first new studio album in over twenty years! Entitled i/o, it streets on 12/1 and features 12 new tracks, which he’s been releasing digitally one by one each month all this year. Interestingly, each track has been finished in Bright-Side, Dark-Side, and In-Side versions—that last is an immersive Atmos mix. Accordingly, i/o will be available in separate Bright-Side and Dark-Side 2-disc vinyl LPs, as well as a 2-disc CD release which includes both the Bright-Side and Light-Side versions, along with a 3-disc CD + Blu-ray version that includes both versions plus the Atmos mix on Blu-ray. And for the diehard fans, there’s an ultimate box set that includes all of the above. You’ll find these available for pre-order here on Peter Gabriel’s official website as well as here on Amazon UK. (If they appear on Amazon US too, we’ll add those links as well.) [Editor’s Note: Here’s the US Amazon pre-order link for the 2 CD + Blu-ray version.]

We’ll leave you with a look at the cover artwork for a number of the major titles officially announced in the last few days, each with Amazon pre-order links (just click on the covers—and know that whenever you order literally anything from Amazon after clicking to them through one of our links, you’re helping to support our work here at The Bits and we really appreciate it!)...