I don’t know if I should be excited or upset about this but it looks like Universal is planning on releasing Ridley Scott‘s visually arresting, narrative-challenged 1985 film, Legend on Blu-ray. Amazon has posted a listing for the disc as well as the (truly garish, floating-heads) cover art, which you can see below, claiming that it will be released on May 31st. No further details are available and the studio hasn’t made a peep about the disc as yet, which doesn’t bode well for the transfer, if you ask me.

With a few notable exceptions, Universal has been dumping their catalogue titles to Blu with pretty lackluster image quality (Spartacus, anyone?), seemingly dusting off old masters to make a quick buck and I’m afraid that’s what we’ll see here. The Amazon listing states, however, that this release of Legend will be an “Ultimate Edition” so I’m assuming we can expect to see most of the DVD features ported over. Whether or not the U.S. version of the film, confirmed for inclusion in this release by the cover art, will be in HD remains to be seen.

(UPDATE: From the MSR price point quoted on Amazon, I would guess that this will be a single BD50 disc, therefore making the inclusion of an additional 90-minute film in HD, on top of the 114-minute HD feature-plus-extras a highly unlikely proposition. Ideally, this would be a 2-disc presentation, like the previously issued DVD, giving both versions of the film room to breathe but I don’t see that happening here.)

I’ll keep on top of this and give you an update as soon as the studio makes their official announcement.

(UPDATE 2: Well, will you look at that. Mere hours after publishing this post online, Universal officially announced Legend for release on Blu-ray on May 31st. I’ve updated the special features list and audio details but as you’ll see below, the Blu-ray will mimic the DVD in almost every way.)

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Theatrical & Director’s Cut Versions
• 1080P Widescreen
• English 5.1 DTS-HD MA
• English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles
• Isolated Music Score by Tangerine Dream (Theatrical Cut only)
• Feature Commentary With Ridley Scott (Director’s Cut only)
• Lost Scenes
• Creating A Myth: The Making Of Legend
• Bryan Ferry “Is Your Love Strong Enough”
• Theatrical Trailers
• TV Spots
• Photo Gallery
• BD-Live / My Scenes / Pocket BLU App

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