You will all no doubt be well aware that the Indiana Jones 4-Movie Collection technically streets today. But many of you will find that your pre-order copies are delayed in shipping, while other fans got their pre-orders over the weekend. The reason for this is that replication capacity is maxed out at the moment, struggling to keep up with demand. Steelbook product appears to have been replicated first—virtually everyone who got their pre-ordered discs over the weekend had ordered the Steelbook SKU. And retail sources tell me today that most of what you’ll find in stock in your local Target or Best Buy today are Steelbook copies. Regular packaging SKUs should arrive in stores by next week. So don’t be surprised if you walk into your local store today and all they have are Steelbooks. And don’t be surprised if your pre-ordered copies are delayed in shipping by a week or two. Also, don’t forget that the Blu-ray repackage now in stores (that uses the same art as the new 4K remastered set) is NOT remastered—they’re simply repackaged versions of the existing Blu-rays. I don’t know this for a fact, but my suspicion is that remastered Blu-ray SKUs will come out sometime next year, when Indy 5 hits theaters or home video.
By the way, we believe that this maxed-out replication capacity is the reason Warner Bros. Home Entertainment hasn’t yet announced the Middle Earth 4K/BD Ultimate Collection that they hinted last fall was coming this summer. So don’t be surprised if that release slips to later in the year.
Back to Indy for a moment, the good news is that the 4K remastered films have dropped today on Digital services like iTunes, and it sounds like the remasters are pretty great. We’re hearing that much of the visual effects compositing has been redone to fix matting errors and the like, the slight green tint from the Blu-rays is gone, etc. I can’t wait to revisit these films on disc later this week.
All right, some of you may have seen that Trek Report (and Heavy.com) have posted new articles regarding the status of the classic Star Trek films on remastered Blu-ray and 4K, and that my name is mentioned, and I’m quoted in the pieces. I was indeed interviewed for these articles but the reality is that there’s really no new news to report and that’s a topic for another day. I’ll circle back to it here later this week or sometime next.
In the meantime, while this is not included on the new Indy 4K box set (which is a bummer), Paramount and Lucasfilm have produced a new 5-minute promotional clip for the release with sound effects guru Ben Burtt and John Roesch talking about their work on the original film. You can watch it on YouTube below...
That’s all for now. Stay tuned...
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