Now then, the big announcement news today is that Paramount has just made their Roman Holiday (1953) 4K Ultra HD official for release on 8/15, in honor of the film’s 70th anniversary. The 2-disc package includes the film both in 4K and also 1080p HD on Blu-ray, with all of the previously released special features, including 6 featurettes (Filmmaker Focus: Leonard Maltin on Roman Holiday, Behind the Gates: Costumes, Rome with a Princess, Audrey Hepburn: The Paramount Years, Dalton Trumbo: From A-List to Blacklist, and Paramount in the ‘50s: Remembering Audrey), 4 photo galleries (Production, The Movie, Publicity, and The Premiere), and theatrical trailers.
Paramount has also officially listed Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One for Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K release on Amazon.com, which means you can now pre-order the title in all those SKUs. Street date is still TBA, as the film has only just arrived in theaters today, but look for the disc release in late Q3 or early Q4 of this year. In the meantime, you can see the cover artwork above left and also below.
Lionsgate is reissuing the first three Expendables films as 4K Ultra HD Steelbooks on 9/5.
Arrow Video has set a number of great Blu-ray titles for release on Blu-ray on 9/12, including Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, The Stuff, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, House II: The Second Story, The Count Yorga Collection, Flowers in the Attic, and Gothic Fantastico: Four Italian Tales of Terror (which includes Lady Morgan’s Vengeance, The Blancheville Monster, The Third Eye, and The Witch).
Also today, Jeff Nelson, who has been Shout! Factory’s senior marketing director and a friend of The Bits for 14 years—not to mention the co-creator of the highly-successful Scream Factory label—has officially left the company in search of new challenges. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for the tremendous service he’s rendered to disc collectors and movie fans over the years, and to wish him well in all his new endeavors. Tip of the hat, Jeff! We appreciate everything you done and we’re all going to miss you!
(That’s Jeff on the left there—with myself and Shout!’s Brian Ward—at Shout! Factory’s 2018 Comic-Con panel, one of several I was fortunate to host in recent years.)
We also need to take a moment today to acknowledge the closure of the indie/boutique label Olive Films, which has released many great Blu-ray titles in recent years. The company has sadly but officially ceased operations (as you can see on their website here). Our thanks to everyone at Olive for all their hard work, for many great titles, and for their dedication to classic cinema.
On a brighter note today, while it’s possible that some of you may have seen these trailers when they dropped on YouTube over the last day or two, it’s worth sharing them again here for those who might have missed them: Here’s a first look at Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (which arrives in theaters on 11/22) and the first truly extended trailer for Star Wars: Ahsoka (which debuts on Disney+ on 8/23). Enjoy!
We’ll leave you today with a look at the cover artwork for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One, a few of the titles mentioned above, and more (all with Amazon.com pre-order links)...
Stay tuned!
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