Thank the good lord for Comic-Con! It’s the one event every year where you’re guaranteed to run into directors, producers and studio reps (along with a myriad of questionable costumed miscreants) capable of answering your burning home video questions. And this year, Examiner.com‘s Bryan Young hunted down and interrogated Steve Sansweet, the head of Fan Relations at Lucasfilm. Like us, Bryan wanted to know about the possibility of seeing the Star Wars Saga on Blu-ray. And after being softened up by the business end of an electro-pike, Sansweet was ready to offer up the goods…

“But we’ve been looking at an ultimate box set of the Star Wars movies, all six of the movies. And what special features would be. And clearly these days, if you did an ultimate box set and didn’t do it in HD, Blu-ray, it just wouldn’t make any sense. So now it’s a matter of thinking okay, we’ve been thinking about this for a while, we know what kind of assets we want to use, we’ve done some work in cleaning up things, it’s really a matter of making that decision of when’s the best time to release it.

Do you wait and have an event because you’re working off of the fact that there’s going to be a new live action TV series?
All those things are very much in motion. I can say with pretty good confidence that at some point in the next several years there will be a complete set of Star Wars movies and lots of extras and deleted footage and anything anyone could want. Although I say that with some trepidation now because our fans want everything, “Why the Holiday Special wasn’t on there, you ruined my life!”

But in the next few years there will be an ultimate box set and certainly a Blu-ray set.”

Can’t get any more plain than that. “…there WILL be an ultimate box set and certainly a Blu-ray set.” So, it’s really just timing at this point, as I suspected (and wrote about in a previous article, which you can read here). Expect to see the six-film, Ultimate Star Wars Saga Blu-ray box hitting around the air-date of the upcoming live-action television show.

There’s more information and a lot more Sansweet interview over at Examiner.com.

Read More

All right. I know. I’ve posted most of this stuff before. But you see, most of that news was either speculation or condensed information. But this is the real deal, straight from the horses mouth. According to Fox, you can take it to the bank that this is the final word on the X-Men Origins: Wolverine Blu-ray disc.

The confusing bit for me is that there’s no hint of the alternate cut that director Gavin Hood mentioned to Home Media Magazine last week, and that we reported on only days ago. Maybe it’s an Easter Egg.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

(September 15, 2009 – MSRP $39.99)
Video: 2.39:1 1080p AVC
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio

Special Features:

• Commentary by Director Gavin Hood
• Commentary by Producers Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter
• The Roots of Wolverine: A Conversation with X-Men creators Stan Lee and Len Wein
• Wolverine Unleashed: The Complete Origins
• “Wolverine Weapon X Mutant Files Featurette: 10 Character Chronicles
• “The Thrill of the Chase: The Helicopter Chase Sequence” featurette
• “X Connect and On Set With Gavin Hood” featurette
• X-Facts: Trivia Track
• Deleted Scenes with Commentary by Director Gavin Hood
• Alternate Memory Erase Sequence
• Alternate Tag Scene: Japan
• Fox Movie Channel Presents: World Premiere
• IMDB BD-Live technology
• Digital Copy

Read all about the UK Blu-ray release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine in our previously published article: UK to get X-Men Origins: Wolverine on October 19, Full Blu-ray Details Announced

Read More

It’s almost 2AM. I should be asleep already (got an early day tomorrow) but I’m so excited about this trailer for the Clone Wars Complete Season One Blu-ray that I thought I’d better shove some toothpicks under the old eyelids and get this posted for you.

This package looks fantastic! Everything we’d heard in the early rumours has come true in this release, including the digibook packaging! Look at the examples given in the trailer of the design work featured in the pages of the book! This thing looks fantastic! Exclamation mark!

Read More

I’m more and more impressed with The Digital Bits’ Bill Hunt on a daily basis! I want to be this man. Not only has he made me jealous with the extraordinary panel he put on at Comic Con last week (DVD and Blu-ray producers spilling their secrets live, on stage!!) but he has now assembled his own custom, more informative and practical packaging for the recently released Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series Blu-ray 20-disc set! Check it out:

That’s right fans, he has used the ACTUAL binders from the show! You can too. Bill tells you how over at the Bits. But that’s not the coolest thing. He has made individual inserts for every Blu-ray, listing all episodes and bonus features on each disc, so you know where to find what you’re looking for. This is something that Universal didn’t think about when designing their “too-cool-for-school” packaging. Luckily, your uncle Bill has come to the rescue:

The inserts are available for you to download at The Digital Bits. If you grab them and make your own packaging, shoot him a note of thanks, will ya? Learn more about Bill Hunt’s custom packaging here: DAILY COLUMN: Claudette box films, Watchmen UCE & custom BSG packaging

Read More

Designer Elaine Ho (www.roadkillroadkill.com) of Montreal forwarded me a link to this excellent exposé on the Blu-ray manufacturing process yesterday: a slideshow of images from Sony‘s new Blu-ray factory in Sydney, Australia, with an excellent, concise walkthrough of the process by Charlie Brewer. He takes you from tiny polycarbonate granules being piped around the factory to molded, flat, coated discs, packaged and ready to ship out to shops in fifteen easy steps. The photos are fascinating and the text, while short is pretty illuminating.

Read the article, look at the pretty pictures here: Inside Sony’s Blu-ray Factory

When you’re finished learning how your favourite films make their way onto your favourite format, head over to Elaine’s site and check out her amazing designs and really fun design/fashion/cat blog: Elaine Ho

Read More