Hey folks, Harry here and from the sound of THE JACKAL, we have a lot of sure buys on DVD coming up. All I can say is.... this BLADE RUNNER, SUPERMAN and JAWS dvd... sounds like heroin for my needle. Joy oh joy oh joy!
Hi Harry,
Long time reader, first time contributor.
At 8 AM the 'Kevin and Bean' radio program on 106.7 KROQ (a local radio station here in sunny Burbank California) had a telephone chat with George Lucas and Melissa Joan Hart who are racing at the Toyota Grand Prix. After all the racing questions George was asked about EPISODE 2. He said that "the script was finished a couple of days ago" and that he would be leaving for Australia "in 8 weeks." Then he was asked about EPISODE 1 on DVD to which he replied "it's being worked on. The work on the supplemental stuff is taking longer. It will be coming at some point." This statement and his tone of voice suggests to me that we will see EPISODE 1 on DVD much earlier than 2006.
Now to some other info that you already know about; I just want to throw in my two cents as further confirmation.
Richard Donner is working on a new restored and longer cut of SUPERMAN that will hit theaters in late fall and than be released as a special edition DVD with a lot of supplements. It is still being decided whether the theatrical release will be wide or limited to certain markets.
Ridley Scott has completed a brand new cut of LEGEND which is about 30 minutes longer than the original US theatrical cut. The new cut actually has more than 30 minutes of never before seen footage because some of the scenes from the theatrical cut have been removed. The new cut will be an incredible revelation, both to the fans and critics of LEGEND. This new cut features Jerry Goldsmith's original score for the film that was replaced in the US by the Tangerine Dream score. This new cut will be released on DVD with a commentary track be Ridley Scott and other supplemental material. The new cut was about to get the DVD treatment several months ago but the moment Steven Spielberg gave the green light on his JAWS DVD Universal postponed the LEGEND DVD so that the in-house equipment could be used for JAWS, which will finally get a 5.1 Dolby Digital sound track.
Late last year Warner Brothers approached Ridley Scott about creating an archival print of BLADE RUNNER because the film is constantly rented out to art house theaters and university campuses for screenings. Ridley Scott is now working on this print and he is taking this opportunity to fix certain things in the film that he was never given the time to do on the previous "Director's Cut" release of the film. The fixes will include digital wire removal for the Spinner cars, ( if you have ever seen the movie on the big screen then you know the wires from an off camera crane attached to the spinner are very obvious in certain shots) plus dialogue change as in when Captain Bryant tells Deckard that "one 'skin job' got fried' will be changed to "two 'skin jobs' got fried'," this will fix one of the biggest problems in the film because of the 6 Replicants mentioned in the movie we only meet 4 and a fifth was killed which leaves the 6'th Replicant unaccounted for. In this new version two are dead and we meet the other four. (FYI there was a fifth replicant named Mary who was dropped from the movie early during the shoot due to budget limits. If you are interested in everything relating to BLADE RUNNER I suggest reading a book called "FUTURE NOIR: THE MAKING OF BLADE RUNNER" by Paul M. Sammon) Ridley Scott is contemplating about putting back some footage into the film that was originally cut including the scene in which Deckard visits Holden at the hospital. Another remote possibility involves the slow motion shot of Zhora going through the glass as she is shot by Deckard. As the shot stands today we see the stunt double for Joanna Cassidy go through the glass and it is very obvious that it is a stunt double with a bad wig. One possibility in fixing this shot is to take as shot of Joanna Cassidy's head and digitally morph it onto the stunt double, something that was done very successfully in EPISODE 1. Most of this is still up in the air but the idea is for Ridley Scott to finally be able to make his definitive cut of BLADE RUNNER and to release it as a special edition DVD for this Christmas with a possible limited theatrical release in October.
A friend of mine informs me that Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott recently met at a public function and that Ford told Scott that he would very much like to work with him again. I hope that this means their long standing feud on the set of BLADE RUNNER is in the past and we can see these gods work together again.
One last bit of Ridley Scott news. Scott cut 16 minutes of footage from GLADIATOR because he felt the movie worked better without them, but because work is already underway for the DVD release he will be putting this footage on the DVD supplemental section plus a combination reel of all the small snippets that were done throughout the editing process. The idea is for the fans to be able to see as much of the original footage shoot for the film as possible.
Hopefully GLADIATOR will be the giant hit we all know it can be. Then maybe Warner Bros. and Universal will be more willing to release the new cuts of BLADE RUNNER and LEGEND into theaters.
Until next time,
THE JACKAL
