Speaking of 4K, we now have multiple retail sources confirming that Disney plans to release their new live action Mulan (2020) on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray on 11/10. That same day, you’ll also get the animated Mulan (1998). Now... keep in mind that Disney has not yet officially announced the release of either title, but we know for a fact that Best Buy stores are getting their shipments in stock and employees are being told that 11/10 is indeed the street date. So we would expect an official announcement sometime in the next week or so.
Also, we’ve confirmed with retail sources that Disney will be releasing the 20th Century Studios/Marvel title The New Mutants on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD a week later, on 11/17. Again, this title has not yet been officially announced, but some retailers already have it listed for release on that day.
We’ve updated the dates for both titles in our 4K Ultra HD Release List here at The Bits accordingly.
Back to Kino Lorber Studio Classics for a moment: The company has been teasing some of their early 2021 Blu-ray and DVD releases and it looks like there’s some great titles on the way in February. Among those to expect are Arnold Laven’s Anna Lucasta (1958), Leo Penn’s A Man Called Adam (1966), Bernard L. Kowalski’s Stiletto (1969), Harvey Hart’s Dark Intruder (1965), and James Whale’s The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933) on 2/2, Lewis Allen’s So Evil My Love (1948), Robert Siodmak’s The Suspect (1944), Carlo Lizzani’s The Hills Run Red (1966), Enzo Barboni’s Man of the East (1972), and a double feature of Harry Horner’s Man from Del Rio (1956) and Allen H. Miner’s The Ride Back (1957) on 2/9, and Jon Avnet’s The War (1994), Steven Soderbergh’s The Underneath (1995), William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s Jetsons: The Movie (1990), Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen’s The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002), and Tony Zierra’s Film Worker (2017) on 2/16. The company also has Francesco Rosi’s Illustrious Corpses (1976) listed as coming soon.
Meanwhile, for Code Red, KL Studio Classics will release Sergio Martino’s The Great Alligator (1979) on 2/2, and Barry Rosen’s Devil’s Express (1976) and Sean MacGregor and David Sheldon’s Devil Times Five (1974, aka People Toys) on 2/9.
And for Scorpion Releasing, look for KL Studio Classics to release Charles B. Pierce’s The Norseman (1978) on 2/2 and Danny Steinmann’s The Unseen (1980) on 2/16.
A couple other things today... a number of you have asked about Arrow Video’s upcoming Gamera wide-release Blu-ray sets, specifically how do they compare to the recent (and now out of print) Gamera: The Complete Collection. Here’s the deal: All of the disc based films and extras are identical. It’s just that rather than buying them in one set, they’re now broken into two sets: Gamera: The Showa Era (4 discs) and Gamera: The Heisei Era (4 discs). So you’re getting all the same films and bonus features. All that’s missing is the swag (the 80-page softcover book, the art cards, the fold-out map, and the hardback comics collection). Gamera: The Heisei Era is also being released separately in Steelbook packaging (3 discs), but note that it does not include the film Gamera the Brave (which is included in the wide-release version of the set). But if all you’re interested in are the films and disc-based extras, all you need are the two wide-release sets (pictured below left).
Here’s the cover artwork for all three, with Amazon pre-order links (street date for all is 1/26/2021)...
All right, one more 4K Ultra HD note today: It’s come to our attention that Universal has begun to ship out the replacement discs for their recent remastered Psycho in 4K and Blu-ray. You may recall that there was a problem with the audio: The discs were supposed to include the original theatrical mono and instead included a mono fold-down of the new 5.1 audio mix. HOWEVER... we’ve also learned that these replacement discs may also have the incorrect fold-down audio instead of the original theatrical mono. We don’t have the discs in hand yet here at The Bits (they’re expected early next week), but readers who do have them are reporting that the error is STILL there. So we alerted Universal to this issue yesterday and they’ve confirmed that they’re looking into it again. We’ll post an update here on The Bits when we learn more.
Here’s a look at the cover artwork for three more 4K Ultra HD titles that are upcoming, including Sony’s 2012 (again, all with Amazon.com pre-order links)...
Don’t forget that the new season of The Mandalorian kicks off today on Disney+. We hear the first episode is pretty good.
And of course, Saturday is Halloween. As strange as it may seem to celebrate Halloween in the middle of a global mass-casualty pandemic, we know that many of you are going to be watching marathons of your favorite scary films this weekend. So we’d like to take a moment to wish you all have a safe, fun, and happy holiday.
That’s all for this week. See you back here on Monday.
Peace out!
(You can follow Bill on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)