The Extras - The Current State of Physical Media

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits joins the podcast to take a deep dive into the current state of physical media, the 4K explosion, and what the future might hold.  We also discuss home entertainment trends, common consumer complaints, and how streaming is impacting the release schedules.  And Bill details the recent and future "Star Trek" motion picture 4K releases and we discuss the 4K of "The Batman," and the upcoming "Heat," "Top Gun: Maverick," and "Avatar" releases. The Digital BitsFacebookOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers.  Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals.  www.otakumedia.tvThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and they're released on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. Today, I have a very special guest on the podcast who may be familiar to many of you

because you rely on his reviews before you buy or watch your movies and TV shows. Bill Hunt is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Digital Bits, which is the oldest continuously operating DVD information website on the internet. Their reviews and articles are the go-to place to research before buying and upgrading your home entertainment library. Bill, welcome to The Extras. Thanks for having me, Tim. It's good to be here. Well, for those listeners who may not be familiar with it, why don't you tell us a bit about the journey from founding the Digital Bits back in 1997 to where you are today? Yeah, it's been fascinating. And obviously,

you know, you've been around in this business for as long as I have. And we've seen the changes from VHS to Laserdisc to the dawn of DVD and kind of the golden age of special editions and content. and kind of the golden age of special editions and content. And then obviously the format wars and Blu-ray finally winning over and now we've got 4K and streaming. It's been fascinating. I mean, I originally studied film at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And I originally got a job as a video producer in Minneapolis doing commercial work, documentary stuff,

industry-like trade kind of, you know, educational things and got hired by a company out here and found myself in L.A. and doing doing video work and a little bit of stuff in and out of the industry. And in that position, I found myself in a position to be able to hear about the developments of DVD even before it launched. And so when it was, I started sharing information on a little email newsletter that I had because I thought if I'm interested, a lot of other people will be too. And the thing of it is, I'll never forget, I was working at a record store in Minneapolis when CDs dropped. I remember being in there and people would come in with their entire paycheck and drop like 300 bucks or 400 bucks on CDs, right? They'd buy everything that came out that week. It was, they were so like eager for content. And I'll never forget when I heard about DVD,

I thought, Oh my God, if they can put a movie in high quality, plus all kinds of extras and better audio surround sound on that same size disc that people are already familiar with and already love. It'll be huge. It'll be huge. It'll be the biggest thing we've ever seen. And I remember in the, in the very first days of the bits, when I started the site,

I had to convince the studio executives of that because a lot of the studio executives I was talking with would be like, well, you know, we see it as kind of maybe laser disc and laser disc doesn't really sell well. And I, and with would be like, well, you know, we see it as kind of maybe Laserdisc and Laserdisc doesn't really sell well. And I just, it's like, I said, I don't think you realize what's about to happen here. This is going to be huge. This is going to be massive.

And so sure enough, so I started the bits as an email newsletter and was sharing it out with friends. And then when DVD launched, I started the actual website. And what happened was, is I was the way the actual website. And what happened was, is I was on Earthlink. I just had a personal page on Earthlink, put it on there. And I was sharing information like, you know, here are the titles that are coming out this week. Here are the titles that I know are coming that are being worked on. And all of a sudden, like within a month, Earthlink called me up and said, you're getting way too much traffic. You're getting a huge amount of traffic. You really need to buy a website and a domain and do this like as a business. Cause you,

you're getting a massive amount of traffic. And in some of my first readers were people like James Cameron and, uh, studio executives and things. I mean, Warren Lieberfarb was a reader of the website. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Ronnie. Cause when Ronnie Sass was, was his assistant at Warner Brothers, Ronnie would print out what I was saying every, every day or every week and show it to Warren and Warren would comment. And, and, and so, you know, like one day I just got a call from Ronnie out of the blue saying, you know, Warren would really like to meet you and have you come in and show you what we're doing. And it's like, you know, and, and, you know, the Spielberg and all these directors and stuff were reading because there was just nobody else covering this stuff.

At the time, even the trades weren't really talking about it that much. And so the site just really just rapidly exploded. And I found myself all of a sudden running a website. Like two days before I started doing this, if you told me that that's what I'd be doing for the next 25 years, I would have said, what's a website? Like, what do you mean? And I just kind of fell into it and it took off. And I've be doing for the next 25 years. Right. I would have said, what's a website? Yeah. Like, what do you mean? Right. And I just kind of fell into it and it took off. And I've been doing it ever since.

And it's been phenomenal. I mean, my first advertiser on the bits was Netflix. When Netflix was just a brand new company, they were literally like the first month that Netflix existed, I got a call from them. And I met with them at the Video Software Dealers Association convention in Vegas. And they said, we'd like to advertise on your website.

And here's what we do. We're doing mail order, DVD rentals and stuff like that. And, you know, I just fell into this. I really, I mean, but I studied film in college, not so much production, but, uh, but like film analysis and film, film criticism, you know, just understanding the history and structure of cinema, how it works. Um, and so, you know, my experience with the bits was very much, I grew up in North Dakota, and we didn't have access to classic cinema.

I mean, it was basically just whatever was on TV or HBO, that kind of thing. Or we didn't really have a revival theater or anything like that. So you had like two or three theaters in town and you got whatever you got. And so there was a whole world of movies that I didn't know about. And then when I got to college, I found myself, my first job and guy was the university of Wisconsin was, it was a work study job. I was the projectionist for the film department. And so then I found myself as the projectionist watching for the first time, once upon a time in the West and, you know, in Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, I can't tell you how many times I almost missed the real change because I was so engrossed in the films.

And so I just thought, you know, one of the reasons why I really started the bits is because I thought if I had that experience, there's got to be a lot of people out there like me who just haven't had access to these films before. And all of a sudden with DVD and physical media, like you've got access to the entire world cinema. Yeah. That's, that's a really valuable experience. And I've got some experience in that and I, some knowledge and I can kind of guide people into it and,

and teach them how to, you know, buy a player, how to get the most for their money, how to set it up, how to really get the most of the experience without having to spend a lot of money. And that's really the principle we've been following all along is just kind of bring people in. And when the real surprise for me has been, you spend a lot of time talking about this content, but about every eight or 10 years, you realize there's turnover in the audience. You've still got your longtime readers, but there's all these new young people that have just gotten out of high school or out of college, and they're just starting to discover this

stuff. And so there's this constant like bringing people into the world of, you know, cinema and home entertainment and that kind of thing. And that's been a lot of fun. It's been rewarding. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, I mean, you just mentioned the turnover of the audience, but in the 25 years of this journey for you, has the format of how you approach the reviews changed? Or is that pretty much stayed the same? And it's just the audience that's changed?

It's a little of both. The format, it's changed a little bit, especially with 4K. both. The formats, it's changed a little bit, especially with 4K. 4K kind of demands a different level of reviewing. It's funny, when I very, very first started the bits and right before that, I also was a reviewer. I also worked with Widescreen Review Magazine. Okay. And I remember at the time they were doing a lot of laser, really, really in-depth Laserdisc reviews, really technical reviews. And I didn't do that. I mean, I did a column on the widescreen review about upcoming titles and things like that. But my reviewing wasn't super technical, because I don't want to overwhelm people with with a lot of jargon, right? I want to kind of bring them up to, you know, zero to 50, and then 50 to 100. And then let like, you really want to

get into the weeds you can. But with 4k, the nature of 4K remastering and the nature of transfers, and you know, I get a lot of questions about like, why does this film look great on 4K, but this one doesn't so much? You know, and why is there so much grain on this one? And why isn't there here? And why don't I see as much detail on this one as I see on that one? And that really is dependent on the medium, right? The mechanics of, you know, is it a photochemical film? You know, was it made before the 90s? So there's no digital post-production, because as we know, in that window of the 90s and early aughts, the digital happened, but it was really low resolution. So, you know, a lot of stuff is limited by that.

And then obviously now, you know, most stuff is digital, not everything, but a lot of stuff is digital. And so you have to kind of get into that a little bit more with 4K. But the nature of what I do and how I do it is basically the same. And obviously, we've got a great team of reviewers. We've got Tim Sammons and Steven and Bjork and Dennis Suling and some good reviewers now. And then we've had great reviewers in the past, Adam Janke, Todd Dugan. One of my early reviewers was a retired gentleman. His name was Barry Maxwell. He was a retired climate scientist for the Canadian government and he loved movies. And when he retired, he wanted to review movies. Right. And so he was, he was, he was specialized in like classic Hollywood and that kind of thing. And so it's just been great. It's been great to have just a wide, uh, bringing a wide range of voices and, and kind of perspectives and just to,

you know, everybody has their sort of niche that they really love. And, and, uh, so it's been, it's been a lot of, a lot of fun to do that. You mentioned all the writers on your staff. It looks like there's just a robust amount of releases each month. I know people talk about the fact that it seems, you know, the home entertainment market is decreasing, but in terms of the actual number of releases, it still seems pretty robust. How many titles do you cover in a month? And how does that compare back to, let's say, the heyday of the DVDs of the 2000s when it was just taking off as a format?

Oh, yeah. There's so many titles coming out now, we can't review them all. And the difficulty for me is that I have to, you know, I do the daily column. Right. And that's for me is, is that I have to, you know, I do the daily column, right. And that's my first focus, right. It's all the news. And that involves, you know, talking to sources, talking to studio people, talking to industry people, talking to retailers, gathering the Intel, right. And like, and I've, because I've been doing this for so long, I have the kind of relationship with a lot of these people that I can call and they'll tell me what they're doing. But the arrangement is like, okay, you can't talk about this yet, but here's what we're

working on. Right, right. You know, there are, there are a lot of people who do this, who want to just blow out the exclusives, like this is coming and that's coming. And they want to like air out all the laundry. But the problem is, is, you know, I learned over the years that if you do that too early, sometimes you can actually, you can actually hurt these titles because they haven't gotten talent involved yet. They may not have finalized the deal or the transfers or whatever.

And as you know, from being on the inside of production, lots of things can go wrong along the way that can cause a title to get delayed or canceled or whatever it might be, or features to be removed. Like right now, I'm tracking about 40 titles that I know are being worked on for 4k that I can't talk about yet because I, you know, I want to make sure that they're good. They're really coming before we, we start talking about them, you know? Yep. Yeah. So how does that compare to, to let's say, uh, 2007 is probably like the peak of the DVD. Yeah. I would say it's, well, what's interesting is the nature of the titles have changed. And, you know, I, I've, we've talked a lot about the sort of decline of home entertainment,

the physical media particularly, right? Because everything, as we know, everything is moving toward digital and the studios are very, very focused on digital. So what tends to happen is a lot of the executives who were, who were really formative in terms of the golden age of DVD, who really built the DVD format, these people really understood discs. They really understood the disc consumer, the disc fans, the movie fans. A lot of those people have retired. With a few exceptions, there's still a few people from the old days that are there. But most of those people have moved on or they've retired or they've gone on to other things. And so you've got a whole generation now of younger

studio executives who aren't as much fans of this material, who don't know it as obsessively as, as we all do, um, who may not be aware of the catalog and things like that. And they're not because of the sort of what we've seen over the last few years with a kind of more toxic nature of the internet, they're less and less likely to be engaged with consumers online. So they're not really plugged into what consumers want. And so we get more and more titles that are, it's great that they're coming out, but you know, people maybe complain about the cover artwork, or maybe the extras aren't quite as good as they used to be. Or there are more, you know, budgets for disc releases have been trimmed. So the quality control maybe isn't quite as good.

There are more errors, things like that. And the other thing is it's a little bit misleading because we see so many titles coming out. A lot of those titles are being licensed out to smaller distributors and smaller boutique labels, right? Who are doing a great job. Part of what that means is the replication sizes for the batch sizes for these releases are much lower than they used to be. So whereas a title used to maybe get 15,000 copies replicated, you know, now they might have two, three, five. So a lot of titles are coming out and they're selling out like really fast and they're not being re-released.

So we're in this kind of weird time where it looks like, it kind of looks like we're in the sort of a new golden age of physical media because there's just so much stuff coming out on Blu-ray and especially 4k, but everything's a little more tenuous than it used to be. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of the Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes.

Well, I love the fact that when you do your reviews, you give a lot of attention to the extras. Obviously, that's the name of this show. Yeah. And that's the background I have where I worked. How important are the actual bonus materials to the releases? Oh, I think tremendously important. I mean, especially for certain titles that you know are fan favorite titles, catalog titles. And, you know and fans love that.

I mean, now there's a younger generation that isn't so into that stuff that I think has kind of grown up with literally everything being available on YouTube. And I can't tell you how many times I've seen like, I'll be on YouTube and somebody will have ripped a documentary from a great Blu-ray from 10 years ago, and they'll put it on YouTube, and suddenly all these young people are like, oh my God, this is amazing. As though it's a brand new discovery, right? And it's, you know, so all this stuff is available on YouTube or a lot of stuff is. And so there's less focus on that. But I think for the longtime people like us and the real collectors,

you really want that content. And unfortunately, you know, budgets of, again, budgets are shrinking. And so there's, the industry has less of a focus on that, especially since they're all looking at a digital, you know, and digital content doesn't really support really a lot of extras. You can do them, but nobody's really taking advantage of that on digital, I find. Right, right. Well, I know that I use your reviews as part of my research for the podcast episode. An example of that was the Godfather 50th anniversary 4K release.

Yeah. It was just so much legacy material that they brought over after all these various releases over the years. And I wanted to see like, what's new at a quick glance. Right. Put it there. He's like the new bonus material versus the legacy. So I didn't have to scroll through because sometimes I just see a big scroll. I'm like,

well, which part of this is new? Right. Right. Because if you already own, you know, the, the Blu-ray or the DVD.

Yeah. And that's one of the things that are going to push you. You want to kind of know. So I, I appreciate that element of it. And it, you know, working in the behind the scenes or the extras,

we were always the group that could potentially hold up the press release could hold up the street date because everything that's being done for the bonus materials is usually after the film is over. Yes. And that was a, that was problematic for new release titles, whether it be for film or TV. So boy, it would be sweating bullets trying to hit these, these dates, especially when you're working with a filmmaker or talent who is in London or Italy promoting the actual film and they still haven't sat, you know, sat down for their interview or for some last minute things that are needed, or it's just, you're just waiting for them to review the material.

Please get back to us by Tuesday. Otherwise street date is, uh, you know, is in jeopardy. Right. You'd be sweating bullets on it, but for the catalog stuff, it's much more relaxing to work on a catalog title where you're doing that something new. Let's say the, you know, the Godfather, you knew you had some time. People were either going to be involved because they wanted to be involved or not. Right, right. Exactly. Because it wasn't generally about the money. Yeah, exactly. So, but you know, to me, I'm always looking at that. And that's something

we'll talk about here when we get into maybe a discussion of some of the stuff coming up. But I also noticed you have a foreign audience, people who you talk to about the releases that are overseas and things. Do you have areas overseas where you guys cover the releases? Oh, yeah. Certain parts of the world, Japan, Europe, Brazil, like South America, there's a huge following there.

Australia and New Zealand. And the interesting thing is now with Blu-ray, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, we're part of region A. So sometimes there would be things that would be released there that weren't released here. But obviously, because it's all the same region, as long as there are English subtitles or whatever, English audio tracks, you can take advantage of that. The interesting thing now with 4K is there's no region cutting. So now there are a lot of films that are only released internationally or only released here and not not released internationally and so there's a lot more

pre-ordering from overseas that happens whether via amazon or cd japan or some of the you know the many great zavi the many great like sites that ship internationally you know so you find out about a 4k title that's coming and you just have to check and see, okay, if I'm talking about this for my American audience, is it coming out in France? Does it have English subtitles? Does it have English audio? And if so, then people here can benefit too. And so that kind of international focus has gotten a lot more important. Yeah. We have listeners in the UK and Australia. Quick shout out to all of the extra listeners there. And I think they could benefit if they don't already follow you to, to kind of know what's coming out of their territory. Yeah. How about Hong Kong cinema or Asia cinema? Is that something you guys cover?

Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We're so overwhelmed with content. It's hard to focus on things like I would love to be able to have like, you know, one or two people who just focus on different genres and stuff like that, but it's just the economics of what we do and the number of people we have versus all the content we have. It's, it's become trickier, but yeah, absolutely. We've got, you know, we've got reviewers who cover all that, you know, all kinds of stuff. Yeah. I mean, it really isn't a genre of cinema that we won't dive into if, if it's something we find really interesting or, or curious because we know that if, if we're interested and we're curious,

there's somebody else out there is, is too. And we love to call attention to great releases and, and talk about these things whenever we can. I mean, it's basically whoever's releasing, right. It's kind of,

it's more along those lines. If it's an arrow or shout or Kino or Major Studio, it's a title worth covering. Yeah. And then sometimes there are cases where we got a version here, but the version released in Japan or in Hong Kong is better. Their extras are a different cut of the movie. And so, you know, you can find little discoveries like that and call attention to them and say, hey, you know, this company in Japan has got a really great version of this that you might not have seen and it's worth checking out. And, and so, yeah, we, we definitely try to do that. It's, it's, you know, that's, I think the thing that surprised me when I got into doing this is that the whole world of cinema is so much

bigger than people realize so much bigger than I ever realized. And what's interesting is one of the things I really love doing too, is not just covering different genres and things like that, but drawing new, you know, newer audience members, younger audience members, drawing their attention to older content. Right. Cause I know I just in day to day life, I know how many, how many times I've talked to people who say, well, you know, if a movie, if the special effects are kind of dodgy or if the movie's in black and white, I don't really, not really all that interested. And it's like, wait a minute, like you really should try to dip your toes in the water and check some of this stuff out because a lot of the things that you're watching now are strongly influenced by stuff of the past. And we, you know, older filmmakers were pioneering

this stuff. And, and a lot, a lot of current content has is filled with references, you know, rather either, either overt or just subtle, you know, creative touches and flourishes that are all referencing older films. And if you don't have that body of knowledge, you can't appreciate it fully. Right. That reminds me, I mean, any, anything that you get into, whether it be cars or, you know, film or art, when you start off, it's the, it's the one right in front of you. It's your generations. And that is obviously the place you in front of you. It's your generations. And that is obviously the place you're going to start and where you should start.

Some of that audience will want to go deeper. We'll go beyond, or they'll find that they gravitate to a certain director or a certain genre or a certain style. And one thing that happens, I have a nine-year-old daughter. One thing that happens is that you, you eventually run up to the point where you've watched all the movies. There's just no more current movies. Right. So you start going back and you go through the catalog and then, you know, whether it's Disney plus or HBO max or whoever,

and you go to the, the section for family and you're trying to find something to watch. And you start saying, okay, these are classics. These are things where they're going to still work yes you know the the quality of the image might be a little less or some of the effects or things but the story if it's a good story really well done the craftsmanship is good then it's going to endure and you're going to be able to enjoy it yeah even even i mean i remember

you know talking with people when when hd and blu-ray first kind of happened, trying to talk to people and say, you have to remember, we lived with analog standard definition 4x3 TV for a long time because, exactly as you say, if a story is good, you're going to get absorbed in it no matter what the quality level is, right? I mean, that's why people can watch movies on this even, right? If a story is good and it's compelling, it'll draw you in and it doesn't matter what the venue is. But of course, now we're spoiled. When I first got into this, we had that analog four by three. To be able to watch these movies now in quality that is true cinema quality at home is astonishing. And obviously, we didn't all have the experience of seeing every one of our favorite films in a theater back in the day. A lot of people discovered, people our age discovered movies on HBO or whatever it might

have been. VHS. VHS, right. And so now to be able to see these movies in the kind of quality that the people experienced in the theaters when they were first released, it's just, it's a wonder. People experience them in theaters when they were first released. It's just, it's a wonder. Well, I did want to ask you a little bit about the changing industry, which we've kind of been touching on as we've talked here. But what are some of the trends that you're seeing? One thing I kind of noticed, it feels like there's a big movement to 4K. But what are some of the other trends besides 4K? Yeah. Well, so 4k, it, it, what I

tend to find is the digital drives 4k. So a lot of the studios, to the extent that you were getting a lot of great catalog stuff, what's happening is studios are going, listen, we need content for our streaming service. Um, so that's giving them a reason to go back and mine the catalog and do these brand new transfers and remasters. And then they look at what the metrics are on digital, like how many people are watching this on digital or buying it or renting it. And then they go, okay, maybe we can release that physically. It's kind of shifted. It used to be the reverse, but now it's, it's that like you tend to find like a, like Paramount tends to drop a lot of movies on, on digital on, you know, first. Um, and then, and then they

eventually six months or a year later, they find their way to disc if they're popular. I also see a lot of smaller, like I think I mentioned, replication capacity for discs has really diminished over the years. There's, there used to be lots of physical production plants that would replicate discs. And now there's a handful really. And so every, every studio's titles have to go through that pipeline. And so the batch sizes tend to be smaller. So a perfect example of that, what that means is then we've been trained to be a little bit lazy in terms of what we buy because people figure, well, the movie just came out, but if I wait until Black Friday, six months from now,

it'll be half the price or whatever. Here's a movie, but if I wait another year, there'll be a box set of the movies. And that's still true to a certain extent. But it's also true that there are... Things are being replicated in smaller and smaller batches and in limited batches. And sometimes the boutique labels who license titles from the studios, that license is for a limited time for a limited number of copies so um you know so they you know so when they're gone they may be gone unless the studio some the studio licenses it out to another company when that's we've seen that happen for a few times with horror titles and things like that but an example is um the recent ghostbusters limited edition set that came out from sony It was loaded. It had all the, all the movies in the, uh, the new extras, rare, never before seen extras came in a package that looked like

one of the ghost traps. Right. It was amazing. Well, that sold out in pre-orders and sold out before it even streeted. I mean, they only made so many, it was a genuine limited edition and it just sold out. In fact, there were people who pre-ordered it, didn't get them because so many people tried to order it, but like you had to, if you got, if you got in early, you got it. And if you didn't, you didn't, and it's not getting made. It's not there. Sony doesn't seem to have any interest in putting it out again. Right. So, so it's just, you know, if you've got your hands on it, great, but if not, you're out of luck. And we're seeing more with box sets and certain things.

We're seeing more of that. Yeah. Where people kind of want to wait for a better deal because obviously the economy is rough and budgets are tight. I totally understand that. But more and more, we're seeing these titles that if you don't jump on them when they're there, they may not be there in another month or six months or a year. month or six months or a year. Yeah. And just for the listeners, a little bit of, uh, you know, behind the, uh, the business, uh, along what you just said, Bill, I know that when it came to working with marketing on these box sets, the packaging costs were just, just really through the roof. Yeah. So the studios, when they do something like that, that has that real special packaging,

that's really driving the limit. So they go to their supplier, whoever's creating that, um, that box or the special artwork. And they're going to say, you know, what's my price point? So they can run their P and L and say, okay, at 5,000, 10,000, this is what I'm going to be paying per unit. And then the discs putting in there, the labor costs to actually put in the discs and things of that nature if it's a tv series one of the reasons why they're so expensive is you've got a lot of manual labor still yeah it might surprise people to know that somebody has to put the disc inside that box this is not some machine doing that and somebody has to watch every episode

and make sure every episode is correct and make sure there's nothing missing and make sure they didn't lose a scene or it's not too short or right. There's all of that quality control that happens too. That is just, just, it's enormous, especially for a TV release. Right. You, you, something you mentioned a minute ago was, was the P and L. So that, that stands for profit and loss. We should explain that. It stands for profit and loss. And every studio runs that on every single title. Yeah every single title yeah those okay here's 10 titles we're considering what is that what is that and they look back at past sales they look at like what anniversaries might be coming up what other movies by these filmmakers might can we tie into kind of surf on that wave of marketing but every single one of those titles gets subjected to this calculation this profit and loss calculation. And I can't tell you how

many great titles I know of personally that like, were being considered, but they looked at the P&L numbers. And it was like, we might sell a handful of a handful of these. And a perfect example is the Star Trek, the next generation when they did the remastering on that. They did the original series remastering where they went back in and new visual effects and upgraded them all to HD. And then they did the same thing with the next generation, right? Well, it's an enormously expensive process to do that. What they started to see was, is that on those later seasons, they might sell worldwide 5,000 units, maybe not even that. And that's below a level where they can make a profit on it. So they just go, okay, this is probably, this is probably it. And unfortunately that we see that happen with a lot of TV shows where you'll get

season one on Blu-ray and DVD season two and Blu-ray and DVD, then maybe season three is only on DVD and then later seasons just don't even get released. They're just digital. Yeah. Because they, because at some point in that calculation, they just looked at the numbers and said, we're going to lose money if we do this. Yeah. It's a, it's especially a problem for television, like you say. And the more popular show is in terms of the number of seasons, boy, that cost really goes up because I worked on supernatural, which went for 15 seasons and just the number of actual discs that they had to put in there. Yeah. Um, even the Blu-ray, it gets to be huge just to, to, to have all that in there. And that just drives the ability to put in any extra booklets or, um, studio note cards or,

you know, anything, uh, tchotchkes, anything that might go in there to help sell it. So, and some of, uh, some of the smaller film titles, people ask, man, why is the artwork not like that great? Or why is the box seems so cheap? These are very tight budgets people are working on and the ability to spend thousands of dollars on artwork just isn't there for a lot of those titles. Yeah. Just be glad you got the movie and the artwork is really not the seller. The movie is the seller. That's what I tell people a lot because one of the biggest complaints we get is, oh my God, the artwork looks terrible. And it's like, I get it, but man, we're at a place where you should

just be really, really glad that you're able to buy that movie on disc. And, and what matters is the picture and sound quality. And then, you know, the extras you get, but especially the picture and sound quality, because a lot of these titles, what's great right now is that a lot of these titles from the major studios, but also from like Keen Lorber and Arrow and Shout and all these great boutique labels, a lot of them are remastered, right? The reason they're being released is because the studio has done a new remaster

and they may not want to release it themselves, but they'll license it out. And so you're getting these films in great quality. And boy, I really feel like we ought to be more grateful that we're getting them at all on disc. Yeah. Because there will come a day. I'm confident that there will come a day.

I don't know whether that's five years from now or 10 years from now or 15 years from now, but I would guess that 10 is probably pushing it. There'll come a day when these things just aren't going to be released on disc at all. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind. There are TV series that we're all enjoying right now on streaming services. So that we'll never get a disc release. Right. Because the, the incentive for the studio is to keep it on the exclusive on the streaming

service. So there are things we all love and enjoy that just might never come out on disc. And the day will come when stuff will just stop, slowly stop being released on disc, you know, because, you know, we're really digging into deep catalog stuff now, right? You know, on all, all these companies are licensing out all these amazing films that I never thought would come out on DVD and some of them even 4k, but you know, there's going to come a point where everybody will have purchased all of their favorite films and the market just won't be there to support physical media anymore.

Because certainly we've seen with younger audiences, younger audiences tend to be, you know, they're happy to watch it digitally. They're happy to watch it by streaming, you know, and they may not have, they may not be able to afford a house and home theater and a vast room full of discs and, or they may not even want the hassle of that, but they may still want to enjoy the content and digital serves that need. So we have to remember that this, we're lucky to be able to be getting these things. Now in the, going back kind of the 4k, you said there's an upsurge, a lot of that being driven by the fact that they want to restore these titles for the streaming. Has that peaked yet? Or are we kind of looking at a golden kind of year or two of a lot

of these releases coming out? Yeah, I think we're still in the thick of it. I mean, you know, I mean, I'm really delighted to see Paramount really like going deep into their catalog and restoring and remastering in 4k and putting things out on digital and physical for years. Oh my God, for years, getting them to do anything. I would talk with them. In fact, Paramount used to call me up in every couple of years, Paramount studio, home entertainment executives would invite me to come to the studio because they had a brand new catalog marketing team, right? Brand new catalog marketing team. And we're really going to dive in this time. And it didn't happen year after year after year. And finally they've, you know, a couple of years

ago, they've got, they've got a team now that really is like they're kicking butt. They're getting in that catalog and they're remastering a lot of stuff and they're putting out and they're doing a great job and I love to see it. But then you see like, look at what's going on with Fox. Fox basically got absorbed by Disney and Disney's doing almost nothing with their catalog. Not, not just the Disney stuff, you know, the animated stuff, but the live action stuff, the Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, Fox, like all of that stuff. It's just languishing.

It's just languishing. And they would make so much money if they were to do kind of what Paramount's doing, kind of what Warner Brothers and Sony are doing. And, you know, you don't have to put out 100 titles a year, but put out like 10 or 15. They're just like they're all focused on Disney plus. And to the extent that they're focused on the entertainment content, it's, you know, it's the Disney plus content, the star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and they're just not a lot of people there that are going any deeper than that. And it just, it kills me because you know, that stuff I would allow would kill to have some of those films on run remastered Blu-ray and 4K.

Right. And so the point being is that at some point, they might suddenly see the light and go, oh, wow, people would buy this? Maybe we should do it. And so then we'll get a whole other studio's catalog that we can mine. You know, and like MGM is another perfect example. They've made, they're part of uh amazon now and they've made licensing deals with keno lorber studio classics so they're putting out titles like ronin and the train frankenheimer's the train in 4k like rematch it's like oh my god i never imagined we'd get

those movies in 4k and it's it's like so so there are all these bright spots but then you get also these things like disney that just you just scratch your head and going why in the world haven't you put tombstone out in 4k right what about the other alien films why not master and commander and kingdom of heaven and the rock and like there's a huge catalog of films there that could really like see the light of day and people would buy in 4k and blu-ray and then some of those like tombstone hasn't been remastered in 25 20 years right it could use a remastering yeah a couple thoughts come to mind as you as you speak about that one is that i know that being at warner brothers during the whole move to streaming it was like they took the titanic and they said let's turn left and

everybody start rowing paddling you know it was a little bit the Titanic and they said, let's turn left and everybody start rowing, paddling. You know, it was a little bit crazy because then everything else kind of got put in the background. And that was the cycle that all of these studios were in. We got to get there. You know, we got to, we got to get to the streaming place. I'm hoping that once they kind of get there, that some of that focus can, can come back to a little bit, you know, including more of the home entertainment market, but we'll see. There are a couple other disappointments that I have about what has happened in the last five years, but one of them, you just mentioned the Fox merger with Disney.

And it's just because a lot of people lost their jobs. Yeah. And a lot of people who loved film and movies, um, no longer were allowed to work in home entertainment or in television or because they merged all of these assets together. And I can't tell you how many times I've talked to studio executives and I won't name names or studios, but I'll talk to them and go, you know, you really ought to do this title or that title, because there's a huge audience out there. It's dying for this content. And they'll go, I'll, I'll hear the gears turning.

And it's like, do we own that title? Is that ours? And it's like, we forget that like so much of the studio talent has moved on or been downsized or whatever, that a lot of the new executives just aren't familiar even with the catalog. Right. Just they're not, they're not really fans of the catalog. They're in the movie business because they're in the movie business, but they're not familiar

with the history and the legacy. They don't know what's in the vault. They don't know what's been released in the past versus what's, you know, what's available now. They don't really have, like you said, they don't really have the connection with the audience that they used to because it used to be the studio executives would, would pay attention to what people were buying and were into. Right. And they would know, like you, you wouldn't have to like try to convince a studio executive to say, you know, you should release this film because, man, there's a huge rabid audience out there for this. They would know already because they were paying attention or they would sometimes email people like me and say, hey, you know, there are a couple of films that we own that you'd think people might really be into. And they would listen and they would take that advice.

And they did very well doing that. Yeah. too. And they would listen and they would take that advice and they did very well doing that. Yeah. Well, one of the big complaints, I think that was the other point I wanted to make is kind of the age old complaint of, oh, I bought the Blu-ray and now it's coming out in 4K. You know, should I upgrade? Why did they do that? Is that a complaint you hear frequently? I hear that complaint a lot and language is often, ah, they're screwing us again. And it's like, not really. I mean, I mean, you know, I can understand people being upset if like they release a title and then they were three months later, they release it again with a little more content

or whatever. I can understand that. But by and large, when they, when they do these things, you're getting more, you're getting a better quality transfer. They've revisited them because they're, they've remastered them recently or whatever. And you just have to decide like, this is the cycle. This is as old as the video industry itself, right? We've all have those films, whether it's Terminator 2 or some of the Bond movies or the Star Wars movies that we own like 10 copies of or have in the past. That's just kind of how it is. But I look at that as a good, as a good thing,

because I'd like to get to the end of the day. At the end of the day, I'd like to get my favorite films in the best quality I can get them in. And as many of them as I can get them in that kind of quality. And, you know, that's just kind of how it is. And, and also we forget that you may have those films, you may have all those copies, but every, again, every five to eight years, there's a whole new generation of, of fans of this stuff that for which all this content's brand new. Right. So, you know, and this, and that, and these, these, these cycles of re-release bring new audience members in. Yeah.

And it's not like there's an evil wizard trying to connive on how to do this. It's really a business and you work with the business cycles. Okay. The film comes out and then you want to get that home entertainment product out as soon as it makes sense. But if your theatrical release was in October, you still may want to get it out close to the holidays. So you're going to rush. You're not going to be able to do as many extras and, and certain things on that release versus a release that was, uh, that came out in March. You have plenty of time to do the release and the thinking. So some of that schedule can drive it. And other times you just have those people who want to bare bones, you

know, release, right. Right. I want to pay for. So there's various markets. There's a, uh, the market is mature. So there's been a lot of development of how to meet each of the demand cycles in the release. So while it's a bummer for people, I know I have, I have copies of films that have never opened. And then the new ones came out. It's been a year and I didn't get around to actually watching, but I did want to own it. Yeah. I'm sure we all have that story. Yeah. There's some other. That's what eBay is for. Right. I mean, honestly, or you, you give it to give the old one to your little brother and you pick up the new one. And I mean, you know, it's like, these are, I mean, I get,

I understand the complaint, but you know, again, it's like, we enjoy this content while we can. And when we, when you, when you're fortunate enough to get a great new remaster of one of your favorite films, man, I mean, that's, we, that's a gift because we aren't always going to be able to have that. Well, I thought it'd be fun to talk a little bit about a few of the recent releases and go maybe just a little bit deeper than we have on those. And this is a little bit self-serving for the listeners

because some of these titles I'm going to mention, I want to get Bill's feedback because I'm thinking about myself. I know you're a big Star Trek fan. And the 4K, is it of the first film, was released on Paramount Plus? I can't recall how many of them. Yeah. of them yeah so so the story behind that is last year when when paramount finally made the decision to start doing the star trek classic films in 4k they put the first four films in a box set so star trek the motion picture the theatrical version of that along with star trek 2 star trek 3 and star trek 4 and they put them out as a box fully remastered and then they did separate

blu-rays that were also remastered. But they had to do that because in order to release the new director's edition of Star Trek, the motion picture, you know, you first got to restore the original theatrical version. And that's part of the process. So they did that last year. Those came out of the box. And now they're finally coming back. And obviously the Star Trek, the motion picture director's edition was remastered specifically for Paramount Plus. Right. And then the idea, so it was exclusive there for a while. And then the idea is that'll come out in September on physical 4K and Blu-ray.

And they're also doing now Star Trek 5, The Final Frontier and Star Trek 6, The Undiscovered Country. So the three new ones. So by the end of the year year all of the original series cast films will be out in 4k and everything and plan is next year they're going to do first content they're going to do the next generation films so first contact insurrection um nemesis generations those will come out next year and the reason they're holding back on those is because the final season of picard uh that comes that's going to come out next year, early next year, I think, on Paramount Plus is kind of a swan song. It's kind of a big farewell for the for that cast.

So they'll tie those films, a box of those or singles of those films into Onion 4K to that. Right. So, you know, at some point by this time next year, all the classic Star Trek films will be out in 4K on on physical 4K, digital 4K on remastered Blu-ray. But it's a little frustrating for some fans because obviously that first release was a box. Right. And so they're not releasing a second box of just the new ones now. they're, they've got, what they've decided to do is release all of the films individually in 4k. And then they're doing a box of all six of them, you know, in a box. So there are fans who are, who purchased that first box who are like, ah, now to get the cover art, I want to have to either rebuy all the films or I just have to, you know, or I, or I just buy the new ones, but then it's not all going to look nice and matching on my video shelf. And I get it. I mean, you know, and it kind of goes back to some of the complaints we were just talking about, but also some of the business thinking. And I think you just laid it out pretty well that I think this is a model or if, you know, maybe I'm kind of late to the table,

but this is either going to be the model going forward or has been maybe for, for a while, but I'm just kind of finally seeing, seeing the specifics of it because we've now been into streaming for enough years to see, okay, this is, this is the way it can work. Yeah. Cause they, you, I don't know if you just mentioned, but they did the theatrical release as well. Yeah. So they did a run, which was fun. And I think that's kind of fun and popular as well to have a one week run, two week run of the, you know, may sound like an anniversary or just a restored print or something. Godfather did that, Star Trek. You know, you couldn't do that during the pandemic, but now that we're back in theaters, you can do that. Then take it to the streaming site and you do the releases as the box.

And then you always want to sell the individuals because there are some people who don't want to own all of them. They just want to choose. Yeah. And that's exactly right. And from a business standpoint, you want the cover to be a little different because you don't want it to, you want to make it different. You want to, you want to have something that is both a draw, but also visually easy for the consumer to say, Oh, that's part of the box. This is different. It's right. Exactly. This is, this is the brand new one that I want to get. This is the single or whatever. Yeah. And then also as we know for the retailers,

it's gotten really tough to sell a DVD, Blu-ray, 4k, you know, so they don't want to put a lot on the shelf, but they do want something that's uniquely theirs, the target exclusive or the Best Buy exclusive or the Walmart exclusive. So the consumer has to look, but there's a reason for that. And that's retailer driven.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, for the Star Trek stuff, I mean, I've been talking with Paramount for years about remastering these films for Blu-ray and for 4K. Because as fans will know, the original Blu-ray releases were terrible. They basically ran them all

through a noise reduction process to make them all look the same. Right. And so they just scrubbed them all with noise reduction. So they all, the characters all look like they're wax figures and all the grain is gone. And it was really, it was terribly disappointing. And that was 2008 or nine,

I think those things came out. And so for years, it's like, do them again and do them right and do them in 4K out. And so for years, it's like, do them again and do them right. And do them in 4k finally. And man, I can't tell you how many conversations I had with Paramount about that exact thing. And so finally they're doing it. And it's like, you know, that's, it's amazing that they are, but I think when they, when they, when they decided to put them out, there was like, well, do we do them as individuals? Because, you know, singles, because if we do, we know there are films that are more popular than others.

And, you know, maybe like this one won't sell well, but these two will. And so they thought, well, we'll do a box. We'll put them all in a box and we'll kind of test the waters that way. But of course, the box was flimsy and the artwork wasn't very good and everything. And the feedback I got, and I passed this on to Paramount, was, look, what people really want is they want them all. They want to buy them individually. They want all the original poster artwork to the extent that they can do that.

So they all look matching on the shelf. They're all good. They want all the legacy extras. And so there's part of me that's like, I give them credit for going, OK, we'll do that. We're like, you know, this maybe wasn't as popular with people, but it still sold well. OK, we'll do that. We'll do them all as singles and give everybody the artwork they wanted. And so now you can get them all in the all match, except for, you know, now, of course, the problem is the people who had that

original set are like, ah, yeah, you know, and I get and I get it. But it's like, this is really where we are. This is really where the industry is. It's not it's not there's there's no intent to screw people. It's just they're testing the the waters they're trying to in a very tough economic environment they're trying to see what will work what they can spend money on what people will buy and what they won't and you know they've got to be very careful with that and so it just this is kind of the world we live in but for my money i'm just thrilled that we're going to finally i can finally stop talking about these films in 4k like we're finally going to have them and they're going to be beautifully remastered and and it's worth mentioning that this this director's edition of the motion picture wouldn't exist if it weren't for paramount plus because that's how they justified the cost of

doing this it was paramount plus because for years they looked at this and they thought well to do that's going to work out like they didn't want to do star trek in 4k because they knew the moment they did one or two of them in 4k people were like well where are, where are the others? Yeah. And obviously one of those others was the director, the Robert Wise director's edition of the motion picture. And that was going to cost like a million dollars to go in and redo that remastering properly. Right. And they were like, oh, that's a lot of money for us to risk. But then Paramount plus came along and said, Hey, we'll pay for that. Right. We'll pay for that. You give that for us as an exclusive, and then you guys can release it on disc. And it's like, so, you know, we have, we have streaming to

thank for the fact that that, that these things are happening. Yeah. And I think that one of the reasons why I use the digital bits as a resource is I can't keep all these releases straight. You guys, I noticed that you do, you know, you kind of say what's different about this one versus previous ones what's different about this the box set versus yeah visuals because that's the question those are the questions i get every day and i'm lucky enough i've been doing this long enough that i've got usually i've got the three other versions that exist on my shelf so i can go yeah when i mean when i review one of these titles the first thing i do is i go and look and see what was on the old one and it did everything make it over and what didn't and why?

And right. So I can I can sort through all that. But it takes an enormous amount of time and energy. It does. And I know that I would work on a title and then I would know or I would be told that there's going to be an exclusive for Walmart or for Target. And I would ask, I'm like, oh, hey, can I get a copy of that as well? In addition to the one I would normally get. Right. And the answer usually would be like, we actually don't get those. Those are sent directly to the store and it's not that easy to get for the, even for the

employees. Obviously we could get some of them, but I'm just saying it was very limited. The number that we would even get internally. So there are a lot of things out there that I wish I had that were a Best Buy exclusive that I've never seen. And it's frustrating for us as a press site too, because, because the thing is when stuff is a retail exclusive, the studios don't like to talk about it because it's up to the retailer to talk about it, right? The retailer to promote their thing and their exclusive and all that stuff. So it's like, even for us finding out what the exclusive content is, it can be tricky.

I mean, it's, you know, it's, and I definitely have gone out and I hate to say it, but I don't, cause I don't like doing it, but I have gone out to purchase the, I got to get that versions cause it's got the exclusive commentary. And it's like,

and it just drives you crazy after a while. But you know, if you're a fan of this stuff, you want it. I don't know how you guys kept it, you know, with all the titles you deal with, but even the few that I dealt with, we would do, you know, let's say now the series is over and you, you're going back, say, okay, well, let's find all the legacy extras. And I would have to scour because I'd be like, Oh,

I think we did some account exclusives and we want want those now to go on the full box set. Right. And we'd have to track down masters that were still, maybe they came out in the early 2000s. So the masters were on DigiBeta. Right. So there's a reason why sometimes the legacy stuff isn't also ported over.

Some of the initial documentaries were you know back in the 90s or something and it just doesn't work in hd environment so there's just so much that goes into all those decisions and like you mentioned just just the keeping sorted all the titles keeping all that stuff straight i have lists i have like like desktop like notes okay here's the here's the here's the list of the titles I know are being worked on for this year. Which ones have been announced? Which ones, you know, can I talk about which ones have come out? Which ones haven't come out? Which ones got delayed? Which ones got canceled? Right. It just, I can't, it's so hard to keep all that stuff straight.

It's gotten to be almost a comedy. Yeah. It's a huge database kind of a structure that you have to keep in mind. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Especially as many years as we're talking about that you guys have been doing this. A couple other titles briefly, I want to ask you about the Batman 4K. Now, that's a very popular film that just came out this last year. I was just curious if the studios put many extras on that release and how they seem to be handling new releases like that in general. They did put some nice extras on that release, I would say. And that release definitely got the kind of there's two kinds of attention that typically in terms of special features that given did get given to new releases. There's the sort of EPK crew, right?

Just like they're just shooting promotional stuff for marketing and for advertising. Right. And so when they a lot of times when they tend to put together special features, it's kind of fluffy and it doesn't really go into depth or detail. And it's not really... It's fine for the casual fan, but the diehard fan really wants meat. Right. And so you get that. And then you also get then the people who really are like, for this title, we're really going to dive in.'re gonna have great content it's going to be for the diehard connoisseur and fan and now obviously the budgets are more limited now so it's harder to do but that title yeah i would warner brothers has been pretty good over the last like dune got got some nice extras had

some nice extras on it the batman got some nice extras on it so there is kind of a move to do a little more on some of these titles, but then you get, then you see other new release titles, like some of the Marvel stuff. It's, it's okay. The content that they're doing, but there's rarely, you rarely will get an audio commentary or it's, it kind of hit or miss, but every now and again, you see something that you see something that's really surprisingly good for a new release film. Yeah. Well, I think that the catalog, like we talked about with the Star Trek, and I also want to ask you about the Raiders of the

Lost Ark, which I think you just reviewed last month in 4K, the 4K release, I should say. Yeah. The catalog, you know, it's understandable that a collector is going to want to buy that right away, but sometimes I've always been a little bit cautious about the new release because I'm curious if they're going to, you know know do another release in six months that has right the the extras so yeah it's good to hear that uh a lot of them though are pushing the 4k format with the extras right off the bat yeah they're starting yeah they're starting to and then the nice thing is some of those big catalog titles the raiders lost ark titles were like that they really did try to carry over a lot of the legacy content, as much of the legacy content as they could. And there are some titles

where they're really, really like, you know, really focus on it's being produced by people who know, and they're like, okay, this last version didn't have this and this, we should get that this time. Let's make it really special. Because I think, I think to the certain extent that a lot of producers now, you know, when a studio is doing a really elaborate box for 4K, for some of these catalog titles, these much loved catalog titles, there's a conscious realization that this might be the last shot we get.

So let's do the ultimate box for the fans that people are really gonna want. Let's see if we can't get everything on there that we wanna get on there. And I'm happy to see that that's still happening. I was just thinking, as you were talking about that, how, when I started off and they were, the studios were trying to release their classic Hollywood titles from the thirties, forties, you know, fifties, a lot of the filmmakers were not around. They had already passed,

or they just weren't of the age where they could still talk coherently about those movies. But in some of these, like the Star Trek's or the Raiders, it's been great because good documentaries have been made from very early on. And there was coverage behind the scenes and books written and historians who were keeping track of what was going on. Right. And so they now have just a wealth of information like the Godfather that you can get for collectors. And it makes it great. I mean, like I love watching the movie.

I love seeing the documentary on the, you know, the restoration or the making of or the behind the scenes. And there's like 10 different kinds of behind the scenes feature that, you know, you can watch that are fun. If there's effects or locations or things like that and it makes for the whole world you just get to stay in that world longer yeah oh totally well and a perfect example of that is the blade runner that the yes the blade runner release that charles de la zuriga produced i mean the the amount of content in that package

is phenomenal and it's all great and it's all in depth and it's all targeted at the diehard fan but there that we almost didn't get it because because so much of that material nearly got destroyed in fact a lot of that material was marked that a lot of film material all those outtakes and all that stuff the deleted all that it was all marked for destruction and somebody in the warehouse just said i think i'm gonna just i'm gonna put this in the warehouse just said, I think I'm going to just, I'm going to put this in the back of the corner and just hope people forget about it. And, and we, and we just got lucky and they discovered it. And it was just this, it was a gold mine. It was everything you'd want. Yeah. And, and, but a lot of films don't have that. A lot of older films,

we aren't lucky enough to, for a lot of that stuff to survive. Right. And I'll never forget early on when, uh, when, uh, the film I really love called the guns of Navarone, Gregory Peck and war film, World War II film, um, directed by J. Lee Thompson. And that came out on DVD. I had the chance to interview J. Lee Thompson and I interviewed him for the, for the digital bits. And we, we had this amazing three hour conversation on the phone because, and he was an elderly, he was like in his eighties, I think at the time, he couldn't believe that people were like rediscovering his film and were so excited about his film. He was so excited to talk about it with me that like, we literally, we were on the phone for three hours, just like talking about, about his career and his movies.

And I, you know, I ended up doing a text interview on the website and everything. And, and it was just a treat. It was a treat to talk to him. And he couldn't believe that anybody cared after all these years. And years later, when he passed, I'll never forget. I got an email from his family saying, we can't express to you enough how much that meant to him. That somebody cared and took the time and focused on it. that he, like somebody cared and took the time and, and, and like focused on it. It's like, so we, we forget that a lot of these older films, it's, you know, it's, we lose these people,

these filmmakers who worked on this stuff and a lot of the older content. And, and frankly, we lose films, film negatives deteriorate and they, they go bad. And that's why, that's why this remastering and preservation is so important or we'll lose our film history. Yeah. And we've kind of gone on this, but I can't help but mention again, the fact that the biggest beneficiary, I think of the home entertainment boom, the DVD, you know, even, even from a laser disc, but any, any format where you had enough room to put the documentaries in the behind the scenes content is now you have a repository of everything about that film or not everything, but you know, a lot of that film, you just, you just have it right there on your shelf and it's got so much information

packed into that, but it's been a real blessing for filmmakers and the writers and all the crew and the people, because it turns a film from being a commodity. You know, we promote it. We got this ramp up to promote it. It commodity, you know, we promote it. We got this ramp up to promote it. It's in the theaters. People watch it. Then we shuffle it through the TV cycle or the streaming cycle. And we have little promotion things so that you can decide if you want to watch it on streaming,

it turns it from that to I'm going to digest that meal this Friday night to more of an art form something that i'm going to keep where you say this transcends you know this is more than just this a one meal kind of movie this is something that becomes art and that's what i think you know you've got the commerce and you've got the art of film and television as well and animation. And you have to put out the quantity to see what is going to endure. Right. Right.

And think of how many films, you know, Criterion kind of pioneered that whole idea of film school in a box. Right. Because I went to film school and I had this amazing like David Bordwell. I was in David Bordwell's classes at Wisconsin. He's this extraordinary film historian and film expert. And he knows so much about the history of cinema and how it works. And Kristen Thompson as well. It was an amazing experience. And what I love is now with Criterion, first with Criterion, and then now with these other

box sets, everybody can have that same experience. And think of how many filmmakers today cut their teeth. They learned their craft by watching some of these extras, right? Quentin Tarantino famously talks about how his, his film education was, he worked in a video store and he just watched everything. And that's, that's important. That's important because it, you're right. It elevates it to the, to art. It highlights the fact that it's art and it preserves it for the future. And it, and it inspires new artists. That's it. That's a really exciting thing. And it's very affordable in terms of the education part.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot easier to go to school at USC or UCLA. That's for sure. Well, Hey, uh, there is one title coming up that I wanted to ask you about, um, in August that I just just I'm pretty excited about. And I'm pretty sure you are as well. And that's Heat 4K. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very excited. You started just take me through. Do you get a copy of it early? Have you already got a copy? Oh, no, no, no. Don't have it yet. Yeah. Don't have it yet. I will have it.

That's a really interesting title because that came out in, in, in 4k digital and Fox did the remastering on that like a couple of years ago. They did, they did a 4k remaster of that, but it, uh, but obviously the pandemic happened and then the merger happened. And so it didn't get really, really released. I think there was a Blu-ray that came out on Blu-ray, but it kind of dropped and, and, and kind of people forgot about it, but the 4k version came out on, on digital it's available on some of the digital services, but there was no 4k release. And it was just this long saga of everybody getting their ducks lined up. And then finally getting Michael Mann to approve everything. And so, you know, so obviously Disney is very

notoriously slow about what they put out on disc and everything. So now, and that title, by the way, was scheduled for last year originally. A year and a half ago, my sources told me, yeah, we're getting ready to work on it. We're going to put this out probably this year. Well, it turned out like a year later now, it got delayed. And I think the reason it got delayed is because there's an anniversary, right? And they've just done these screenings. Right. And also Michael Mann just finished writing and he's releasing this in August, the sequel

as a novel, right? Right. And so they just figured, oh, we'll do it all at once. And so finally we're getting it on disc. Right. And yeah, I'm thrilled. And yeah, I usually get, I tend to get discs anywhere between a week, three weeks. Sometimes I'll get stuff a month early, but usually it's like somewhere

within two or three weeks of street date. Right. And with the pandemic, sometimes we get stuff after street date even. Usually we get it a week or two before street date. And oh yeah, I can't wait to dive into that. I love that film. Well, DVD is the last copy I purchased of that film.

So I'm probably going to buy it no matter what, because I do have my 4K set up now with the player and TV and everything. So pretty much what, because I have my 4k set up now with the player and TV and everything. So every pretty much everything, if it's on 4k, I'm going that option, but that's what I'm excited about just coming up in the very near future. Oh, by the way, he also did a TV series for HBO max somewhere in there. That's right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And that's, you know, sometimes you just have to wait. A perfect, another perfect example of a title that has had to wait is, is the abyss. I love that.

Like, like Fox. And I know this for a fact, Fox produced new special editions, Blu-ray special edition of true lies in the abyss. I know this for a fact. I was at Fox. I mean, I know it for a fact. And we went on the website and said, Hey, it's, they're working on these special editions. This was like five years ago now or six years ago.

And it didn't get released. And it didn't get released because Cameron wouldn't approve it. Because I think what Cameron wanted is he wanted a new scan. And I think he was thinking ahead and he wanted to wait and do a new 4K scan. But then he's so busy with all of these other, you know, with, with, you know, the, the, the Avatar films, right? It's like, he just got distracted by all of that. And so he just, he hasn't had the time to really go back and approve these things. But finally, I'm told by people at Disney and it's finally, finally happening.

Abyss is coming and the first Avatar is coming. is coming and uh the first avatar is coming and they're either going to i don't know if they're going to come out this year to coincide with the theatrical release or if they're going to come out to coincide with the home video release of avatar 2 but but at the very least abyss and and avatar 1 are coming to 4k and remastered blu-ray finally yeah but like you know there are people who don't believe me when i when i said well you know it's like when i when i say they had they had completed special editions they had them ready to go they were ready to release them on blu-ray and cameron wouldn't approve them and it got it i mean i can't tell you i went to events i would go like these blue con conferences and stuff industry conferences and i would and i would ask the head of Fox home entertainment, Hey, what's going on with these films?

And, and he would say, talk to Jim. And then I would, then I would see Jim at an event or something. And I would ask him, he'd be like, talk to them. And I was actually at a, at a conference once where they were both on stage at the same time. And I asked the question and they both pointed to each other. It's like, uh, clearly there was something going on political. There was something going on and, and, and, but it's like, there was something going on political. There was something going on and, and, and it, but it's like,

they've had these special editions ready to go and they just, you know, stuff happens. It's crazy. Oh, well that's a, that's what I will also step up and be in line to pre-order right away. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, if we have anybody still listening to our, just how the sausage is made type of conversation here today, I thought it'd be fun to kind of end up with a little rapid fire questions with you before we call it a day. First up, over the last 25 years, what title have you reviewed the most either due to extreme popularity or just an

abundance of releases? Um, probably Terminator two. Wow. Probably Terminator two, or, or I think tomorrow never dies. One of the bond films also got like, they would put that out every, every few years. And we covered like, I don't know how many different versions. And then, and then obviously the star Wars films. I mean, that's, you know, obviously star wars films too there are but there are a handful of titles that have come out a lot all right next what was your favorite film or film franchise to review that's really a tough question um that's really a tough question i think well I really love Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 I really love Dune that's tough

I mean it's touching on like what's your favorite film because you can review the stuff you love that changes every day like I tell you one of the things I've most enjoyed reviewing was I have been a fan of Japanese cinema for, you know, since college. And I discovered the Zatoichi films. Zatoichi is a blind.

He's a blind swordsman. Right. And there's an actor, Shintaro Katsu, who played this character, blind swordsman. Right. And he played it for 50 years, over like 25 feature films and a TV series in Japan that went for four seasons. And I only discovered them like, you know, like everyone else when they kind of started to come out on DVD and Criterion put out a box set of all of those films. And that was a special thrill because I never thought we'd get those films in, in Blu-ray, uh, you know, properly

remastered. And that was, that was a real treat. I'm going to throw you a softball. What's your favorite current TV show? Oh, for all mankind on Apple TV plus. I love that series. Love that series. And, and I would, and as a second, I would say the boys on Amazon prime, because I'm not, I can't say that I'm a real big superhero fan. I mean, I've enjoyed superhero films over the years, Superman and Batman and all that stuff. But I didn't, growing up in North Dakota, I didn't have access to a comic book store. So I didn't, like a lot of other people in our generation, I didn't like obsess over comic books. I was reading science fiction.

I was going to the library and reading like Asimov and Bradbury and Clark and stuff like that. And so science fiction tends to be my thing, but I've obviously watched all of the Marvel films and been entertained by them in some of the DC films. But when I saw the boys, I thought to myself, okay, it's hard for me to believe in the MCU and the versamilitude of the MCU, because if there really were superhero superheroes, this is exactly as messed up as it would be. Right. This is exactly as messed up as it would be right this is exactly as messed up as it would be yeah well i worked with the eric kripke the uh the showrunner on that show because he also was the creator of supernatural yeah yeah he used to do these meta episodes where they would they would just go left field and they were very popular and i think that uh with the boys's just found, he just found a way to make that work. Yeah. Yeah. And it, you know, it's over,

it's definitely over the top and it's extreme, but it's like, you know, I believe it. I believe it. I believe that's how it would be if there really were superheroes. All right. We're not going too rapid here, but we'll, let's go to yeah, yeah. What movie do you get the most requests about? The question like, when will it be released? When will it be? Well, obviously,

Avatar and True Lies. Okay. I would say the other two that I hear about a lot is Tombstone. Okay. Which I love. And believe it or not,

Speed Racer. The Wachowski Speed Racer, which I also love. Wow. Yeah, that movie, I love that movie when it came out, but I think you really had to be a fan, a diehard fan of the original series to kind of appreciate it. But I've seen that movie pick up a cult, an audience over the last 10 years. A lot of people have rediscovered, discovered that film for the first time and are into it.

And I would say before, besides from that, Star Trek. But so now we, you know. Which is going to be out. Yeah. So now I don't have to worry about Star Trek anymore. This is a little bit more of a digital bits question, but what lesser known genre remains a surprisingly popular when you guys do the reviews?

Oh, wow. Um, I would say, I would say Japanese cinema, Japanese, and I would say anime, which is obviously that's a whole world unto itself. Right. The genre that I think is most enduring that is always people are obsessed over it is horror it's sort of b-grade horror the kind of stuff that scream factory does right the horror is huge or there's a huge horror audience out there and it's interesting because i'm not a huge horror fan right oh yeah people love to talk about like that stuff. That kind of weird psychotronic, a little bit gory, like slasher stuff like is surprisingly huge. Yep. Fear stays with you, doesn't it? You remember when you saw it in the theater or when you first saw it and it oftentimes it was when you were younger and it stays with you. Right. Finally finally to the last question here will top gun maverick be the top selling 4k to date when it comes out uh yes yes i'm gonna go out and say that there's a really really high

billion theatrical here yeah i think there's a real real good shot at that being a it'll be a massive seller on the format it'll be probably the biggest title of the year. And it might be eclipsed by avatar and avatar too, when that happens. But yeah, that Top Gun Maverick, man, who, who, I mean, I enjoyed that first film, but you know, it's a little cheesy. It's a product of its time, but Oh my God, that sequel blew me away. Right. Blew me away. And I wasn't expecting to be blown away and it blew me away. And it's also just, it is shot in large format. It's a perfect 4k title. Yeah. I mean, it's, yeah, it's going to be, that's going to be, that'll be huge. So I can't wait to watch it again in my home theater. I can't, can't wait. One thing I've noticed about, this is kind of a little tag onto that is I watched some of the featurettes that they posted online for

that movie. Yeah. And one thing about working at the studio, they would take, um, the EPK material and they'd have it, you create some promotional type featurettes. It would be maybe two minutes,

four minutes, five minutes, something like that versus a 15 to 20 minute, you know, deep dive. Yeah. Uh, Blu-ray and 4k will allow you to go with the

longer version to some of this stuff, which will be great. Especially since we know that they put in all those IMAX cameras into the cockpit. Oh yeah. I'm hoping that they'll have more than just the two to three minute piece that they had about some of the IMAX cameras and some of the actual flight training that they had to go through. And it was rigorous. I want to see some of that. I hope it's good. Yeah. I'll be all that as well. Oh, yeah.

That movie, I just I haven't I haven't enjoyed walking out of it. I mean, I think Dune made me feel like that when I walked out of the movie theater. I thought, OK, I've really seen something that I can only experience in a movie theater properly. Top Gun Maverick did that. And I think the other time that that happened in recent years was Mad Max Fury Road. Oh, yes. We were walking out of that, those three movies. And I remember walking on Mad Max going, oh my God. Yeah. I mean, George Miller just schooled every, he just schooled every other filmmaker on how to make an action film. Right. At his age, right? Like came out of nowhere and just, I remember I

had a friend who saw that movie like in a sneak preview a year earlier. And he said, this movie is bananas. You're not, you can't understand how bananas this movie is. It's going to be huge. And like, no, we, none of us could understand what he was talking about until we walked out of the theater. It's like, wow. Right. Wow. I've really seen something. Yeah. That was one of those films that, um, when I was working at Warner brothers, people would, people were, the buzz was happening. And, and some of my co workers who were working on the release said, Hey, do you want to, do you want to see some early stuff? I'm like, no, no, I actually don't want to see anything until I go to the IMAX theater. And I want that to be my first experience as a fan. Yeah. And I have to say that that was one where literally the old adage of my mind was

blown. Yeah. And it was just, it was just nonstop. Yeah. Whereas for me, Top Gun was, it was everything I wanted it to be. Right. And then some, right. Because that, because that, that fighter footage, that IMAX large format footage, yes. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a pure formula, right? It's a pure formula, but they nail the formula so well. And then they elevate it with all of this large format fighter. I mean, you can't beat the fact that they're actually in these fighter planes and their faces are distorting from the gravity. And it's like, man, that was, it was just thrilling to watch. It was thrilling to watch. Well, considering that you have a love for sci-fi and all kinds of space, uh, uh, stories and, and of course, pilots from the Navy often become astronauts. And then I think that all kind of

wraps together and makes a lot of sense, but those are, those are probably a lot of people's favorites. So, well, Hey Bill, it's been great having you on the show. We've gone longer than I thought we were going to go, but it's's so much here that we both have either worked on in our careers or we just, it's just interesting to us. So, uh, thank you so much for, for coming on. Oh, thanks for having me. It's been a lot of fun. And, uh, I should just ask you one, uh, before I let you go, where's the best place for listeners to follow your reviews?

Well, you can obviously visit the digital bits.com. Uh, and, and you can also find me on Twitter and Facebook at Bill Hunt, Bill Hunt bits. And then the digital bits has Facebook and Twitter as well. But, uh, we, everything we post every day goes on the digital bits. And then I sometimes break news before I even put it on the website. I break it on my Twitter feed at Bill Hunt bits. Okay. Follow me there. Sounds good. Thanks, Bill. Well, for those of you interested in finding out more about the digital bits, there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theextras.tv.

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