The Extras - Warner Archive January Release Announcement PLUS a February Animation Treat

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Send us a textGeorge Feltenstein joins the podcast to announce six January Blu-ray releases, PLUS a highly anticipated February animation release. George provides background on each film or TV series, the new HD master, and more clarification on the extras that will be included.  And he always drops some knowledge about what is being worked on for the future. There is no better way to learn about what is on the Warner Archive schedule than to hear directly from George. Warner Archive Store on AmazonSupport the podcast by shopping with our Amazon Affiliate linkDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.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, this is Stephen C. Smith, documentary producer and author of Music by Max Steiner, the epic life of Hollywood's most influential composer. And you are listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras. I'm Tim Millard, your host, and joining me is George Feldstein to announce the January Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Hi George. Hi Tim, great to be with you as always. Well it's the first month of the new year but it's going to be one of our last podcasts of the current year to announce these. So it's kind of fun to finish the year with these announcements because I think it's a really nice diverse batch of films, TV and animation in this group which I know you try to do for the various fan bases out there so it's I'm looking forward to

our discussion. As am I. So let's dive into the January announcements and we'll go alphabetically today. Okay. So that starts us with the Western TV series, Cheyenne, the complete series from 1957 to 62. I'm sure this is a highly anticipated release. Well, we have a pretty strong history with Cheyenne as we had brought seasons two through seven to DVD several years ago. And that led me personally to interact

with the show's star, Clint Walker, because Clint and his wife ran a little business on the side where people would order Cheyenne from their own website and he would autograph it. He was just the greatest guy and so many generations of people were fans of the series. He used to laugh that he was getting mash notes from young ladies who still thought he was what he looked like in 1957 or 55. I had the pleasure of interviewing him at the museum,

the Paley Center when they were doing a Warner Archive weekend because we were doing so much with TV and DVD then. It's just the greatest guy and this show was the foundation, the first Warner Brothers television hit series It was part of a an anthology series called Warner Brothers presents which was the studio's first attempt at dipping their toe into the water of television and They had three series they had a Casablanca adaptation with

Charles McGraw. They had an adaptation of King's Row and then they had Cheyenne which was not an adaptation of the 1947 Warner Brothers feature of that name. No connection whatsoever, just the same title. They did 10 episodes of Casablanca and King's Row, but Cheyenne got 15. And the next season, Cheyenne was a regular series and continued on until the very end of 1962. So the 1962-63 season was its last new season, but it stayed very popular in syndication for decades. And it is one of the most popular things we ever released on DVD. So to be able to bring the full series with 4K scans of the camera negatives.

And these are the full shows. They're bumpers and little credits to ABC at the end. And these will be seen in a way people haven't seen them unless they were around for the original run. And that's particularly exciting. This is also, it's on 30 discs. And the reason there's 107 episodes, the episodes are complete, uncut, uncensored,

and on 30 discs, because I wanted to make sure we had a very good bit rate, which is kind of a Warner Archive mandate. And we could have squeezed it onto less disks, but that would be short-changing the consumer from the best experience of owning a series. And I can't speak to the exact nature of how it will be exactly packaged, but I can promise consumers, disks will not be stacked on top of each other and they won't be hard to deal with.

It's going to be very sturdy, reliable packaging. That's really important because there has been a abundance of late of these very not consumer friendly packages of TV releases and I certainly didn't want to put the Warner Archive name on something that wasn't going to be a quality product. So the packaging will be of high sturdy support and the discs inside will have beautiful new masters that will give this show a look it never even had originally because TV sets were at the most what 27 inches or 32 inches if that. I'm terribly excited that we're able to do this because its success, which I hope will be the case, will hopefully pave the way for more series that people are asking for. Because of course, when we announce anything, it's not, oh, this is wonderful news. It's oh great. How about a B C and these laundry lists come up?

Yeah, it's just consistently a predictable thing. We appreciate that people are enthusiastic about wanting more and we're hoping we can do more. But the focus right now is making sure this release is the best that it can be. There is a little featurette that was done for season one, The Lonely Gunfighter, The Legend of Cheyenne Bodie. I think Clint did that probably close to 20 years ago, but it was nice to have him speak about the series from a retrospective point. Add the guest stars are numerous the credits of the people that work on the shows it's incredibly impressive. We got a lot of wonderful response for the three seasons of cold forty five and the single seasons of of Cult 45 and the single seasons of Man from Shenandoah

and of course the Alaskans. So we're keeping in that vein, but with seven seasons and 107 episodes and a suggested retail list price of 124.99, it's cheaper to buy the whole complete set on Blu-ray than to buy the individual DVD seasons. So we tried to get the price as low as we could while maintaining the quality of the presentation and the packaging. So I hope consumers will be really happy with Cheyenne.

I know I'm very much looking forward to it. Well, I'm excited. It's a great continuation of the TV releases from the Warner Brothers Television Library. And I can't imagine that people aren't going to be very, very excited. So let's help people come out and support it so we can have more of those to come. Well, next, we have an animated feature film film from 1988 and that's Daffy Duck's Quackbusters. What can you tell us about this one, George? Well, this has a very interesting backstory. Most fans of Warner Brothers animation know of the animation know of the various compilation films that started to appear. Actually, as early as 1975,

there was a film that was made called Bugs Bunny Superstar, and that was made by a friend of mine, Larry Jackson. He went to Warner Brothers with the idea of putting a compilation film together and Warner Brothers wasn't interested. At the time, the pre-1948, like up through the summer of 1948, color cartoons were owned by United Artists. Later, MGM bought UA and then Ted Turner bought MGM UA, kept MGM, he kept the Warner

Brothers cartoons, the Warner Brothers features as well that were in that library, and certain other rights. And then, of course, that reunited the whole Warner Brothers library when we bought Turner in 96. But the success of Larry Jackson's Bugs Bunny Superstar proved that people wanted to see 35 millimeter classic cartoons in the theater. And that compilation presented nine cartoons with their main and end titles and had bridging footage with Bob Clampett.

And there was a little interview with Tex Avery and I think Chris Frilling was in there also. And it had narration by none other than Orson Welles, who was a friend of Larry's. But because that did such good business, it influenced Warner Brothers to approach Chuck Jones to create a film that was initially going to be called The Great Chase, ended up being called the Bugs Bunny Roadrunner movie, which was a compilation that Chuck had created new bridging animation around some of his cartoons. And that was followed by Fritz Frilling

doing the Looney Looney Bugs Bunny movie with some of his cartoons, and then 1001 Rabbit Tales, and then Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island. But in 1988, a gentleman by the name of Greg Ford and his creative partner, Terry Lennon, had come to Warner Brothers to create new cartoons and among them were The Duxorcist and Night of the Living Duck and give a little background Greg is one of the foremost animation historians he is a friend and mentor to people like Jerry Beck and myself. And Greg being a historian and an enthusiast about animation,

but actually creating his own animation coming out here to Warner Brothers was a great opportunity. And the studio really didn't know what to do with the shorts and ended up having Greg and Terry create this compilation film, Quackbusters. So it's very different from the other compilation films, but what we've done here is we're presenting Quackbusters along with what I call modern era looney tunes that were made after 1980, when the studio would occasionally dip its toe into the water of trying to make new cartoons.

And they never could quite figure out how to make it profitable and sustainable. But we've brought a lot of those on here, particularly the ones that Greg worked on, and I'm hoping that fans will really appreciate having all of this together in a very nifty presentation. And there are many, many people who just enjoyed Quackusters you know i'm phs says that one video release and then seeing it on cartoon network and so forth and so on. What is the new footage that bridge around the excerpted animation from the classic era there is a lot of new things put in there that definitely had. There was a lot of new things put in there that definitely had Greg's wicked and unique sense of humor. Very funny. So I think a lot of people that grew up with this will be happy to have it now as a very

good looking Blu-ray. And with the extra cartoons we're adding, it should be quite a treat. Next we have another animated release but this time it's a TV series from 1966-67 and that's Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles. What can you tell us about this release? This is one of Hanna Barbera's shows that was very popular at the time and we did release a DVD of this many years ago, but it wasn't anything that we had ever remastered or upgraded. It was really two separate segments. There'd be a Frankenstein Jr. segment in the show, there'd be an impossible segment in the show, and they didn't have any connection to each other, but being put together within this half hour

on Saturday morning. We had very, very strong success with the DVD years ago, but it looked not great and we are trying to revisit a lot of the Hanna-Barbera series and we're delighted that this is now coming out on Blu-ray looking and sounding terrific and in its original uncut form. It's great for the people who grew up with it and it's also the kind of thing that can be shared with the whole family. And you have one extra on here it looks like? Yes. There is a behind, I wouldn't say behind the scenes, but there is a retrospective featurette which was actually not done for the DVD release but was done for Saturday morning cartoon collections that I had a little hand in helping to prepare before we really got deep into the animated television library.

A lot of series had never been released on DVD and so for Saturday morning cartoons the 1960s there was a featurette created about this series and we've added it onto the Blu-ray for completeness. Right. Delight. Yeah. Next, we have one classic film for the Mother of January and that is Gabriel Over the White House from 1933.

What can you tell us about this one, George? This is a very prescient, timely film. I had hoped it would be ready, that we could have released it a little earlier than the end of January. It's a political film. It's directed by Gregory LaCava, who delighted us with films like Stage Door and My Man Godfrey. This stars Walter Houston and it is a fable, if you will, about a president that's in a car accident and when he comes out of the car accident, he's emboldened to make changes to the government. It brings up the whole issue of presidential power. So that's

what makes it a little bit timely. This is a bona fide classic for the people who know of it. A lot of people don't know of it and it deserves to be better known. It was a very controversial film within MGM when it was produced because Elbie Mayer and Irving Tholberg had different points of view politically. It was a struggle to get this film made but nonetheless MGM was very anxious to pick up the rights to the book on which it's based. The book was released anonymously in the United States, but in the UK, they actually use the author's real name. So the kind of things that go on all the time nowadays with people hiding behind their identities and various things. Obviously there was sensitivity around the author lending his name to this. But this film among cinephiles and

enthusiasts has always had a cult following and we finally now can bring it out. It was on DVD not looking very good. A very early Warner Archive DVD, we were just glad to get it out there. This is one of those films where the original negative was destroyed in the fire at George Eastman House, but we have preservation materials that we scanned at 4K to create this new master. The fact that this is coming out when it is also calls attention to something that I wanted to talk about, and that is that we like our release schedule to be balanced with a little something for everyone.

With only one true classic film in the lineup for the month, that was not by design. So many things that I was hoping would be ready for January are still not ready. And this is a problem that we faced before. I talked about it a couple of months ago when we released two Technicolor musicals in the same month because I said I wouldn't want to normally do that, I'd want to spread it out. I didn't have that luxury here because the other things that I thought would be ready,

we've just got so much going on that some projects can get done in two months, three months, and some take, we've got one that's now going on two years. When they're ready, we can get them that's now going on two years. When they're ready, we can get them released and get them out to the people that want them. So this is a month where a lot of animation fans are very happy and TV fans are very happy

and classic film fans feel a bit betrayed. So I have to say to them, fear not, there's a lot of great stuff coming. Just be patient, take a deep breath and celebrate all the good things in your life, because new releases of classic films from Warner Archive will continue. I think this is a one-off. I mean, most months, this is not the case. You usually have two to three each month.

So this is kind of a rare occurrence. I think even with only one classic film, there is so much here for a diverse audience. We announced seven releases, six for the end of January, and one we announced a little early for February, which we'll talk about in a moment. But the reason we did that is we need longer lead time because we anticipated being something that's going to sell very well and need a lot of time to build inventory. So we'll talk about that in a moment.

But I bet there's something you want to talk about before we do that. Yeah. I mean, obviously we have the classic film fans who are so important, but I know you have also been working very hard to get some of these more recent films, post-2000, out to the fans because of, for whatever the reason, them not getting released on Blu-ray. And I think this this one coming. Out from 2005 is getting some nice, nice response from folks who are very excited about it.

That's the film Just Friends. And it has quite a cast top line by I'm going to say megastar Ryan Reynolds, because he's so popular right now. So this is a great one. I haven't heard of him. Is he related to Debbie Reynolds or, you know, Burt Reynolds? Well, in 2005, he was not that big of a star, of course. No, no. He had already broken through a little bit with the TV series that he did and National Lampoon's Van Wilder. But his star was definitely on the rise. This film has a very big cult following for many reasons.

But it didn't get a Blu-ray release in the United States. It did get an early Blu-ray in Canada because New Line had it. It's a New Line film and New Line had a deal in Canada with another company. But it was overlooked here. And what I've been trying to do is when we get a lot of requests for certain titles that have never gotten a Blu-ray release here in the US or at all anywhere in certain cases, we look at, well, is this going to be popular? And this obviously had so many people leaving us messages in social media and whatnot that it's on the list of all the things we need to do to fill in the holes of more recent

films and I know that it will make certain people very happy. Yeah, and it has a terrific supporting, well, the rest of the cast I should say is Amy Smart, Anna Faris and Chris Fine. So that cast is all extremely popular actors from that era. And then you put on here quite a few extras. These are legacy extras that were prepared by New Line. They run over an hour. It's a multitude of stuff, but it's very funny.

I mean, if you watch, you know, if you're a big fan of Deadpool, as I am, you know, the funny thing on those movies is they always have something at the end credits. Well, Ryan Reynolds did that even on Just Friends 19 years ago. I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't seen the movie, but what he does in the end credits of the movie is just very, very funny. Yeah. Yeah. We'll leave it at that. Yeah. Lots to look forward to.

Well, we'll review it later and then we could talk to you more. Yeah, absolutely. That's terrific. All right, well, our next title is Last Stand at Saber River from 1997. So that's much more recent. What can you tell us about this release? Well, this is one of many TNT network before they abandoned doing so. TNT was making feature length motion pictures for the TNT network under Ted Turner's leadership and they

did some really remarkable things especially in the Western genre. The TNT originals have sort of been cast aside and forgotten and it's time that they get upgrade to HD and Tom Selleck's work for the TNT Westerns. It's quite impressive and a bunch of them will eventually be remastered, but the first one that has been done is Last Den at Saber River. And Selleck is charming as always. And this is based on the writing of Elmore Leonard, who wrote things like Get Shorty, a great writer. It's a terrifically entertaining, made for television Western. It's not going to be in its compromise theatrical presentation like it was internationally, it will be 1-3-3-1, the aspect ratio for what television was back then. It's entertaining and if you're a fan

of Tom Selleck, especially in the Westerns that he did, this is right up your alley. And we're hoping to be able to dig deeper into the TNT originals library in the coming time. Well you mentioned that there would be one release that is very exciting but it's scheduled for actually early February and that's gonna be the last film that we announce and talk about today and this is a very highly anticipated release and that's Tom and Jerry, the complete Cinescope collection from 19. Well, I guess it ranges from what, 54 to 58? Yeah, in terms of when they were released, the first of the Cinescope cartoons came out in 1954 and the last ones released to theaters came in 1958.

I had this idea to put together all the cinema scope cartoons because they often are not seen in their proper aspect ratio when they get shown on television. Very often they're either in a pan and scan square, 137 I guess, or you'll see the 69 by 9, 1178 pan and scan, both of which are not how the cartoons were meant to be seen. To give a little history, MGM was one of the early adopters of the anamorphic cinemascope format. Cinemascope was developed in conjunction with and funded by 20th Century Fox, and Fox licensed the technology to other studios that wanted to use it. I think MGM was probably the first third party to sign a license with Fox.

Their first cinemascope feature was released in 1953, that being Knights of the Roundtable. table and very soon thereafter they went to the cartoon department and said we'd like to have cinemascope cartoons. So Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera created Tom and Jerry cartoons that were animated for the anamorphic wide screen. They're really quite remarkable and they're beautifully animated and very, very funny. And Tom and Jerry fans have been wanting more Tom and Jerry. I made the pitch to request to do this and happily got a lot of support internally. There were 23 cartoons that were made with Tom and Jerry in the CinemaScope aspect ratio. By the end, the mid to end of the 1950s, Tom

and Jerry weren't the only things that Anna Barbera did at MGM in terms of animation. They also did two Spike and Tite cartoons and a remake of the 1939 cartoon Peace on Earth was done in 1955 called Good Will to Men and all three of those were in Cinemascope. So this is actually a 26 cartoon collection. To have these all in one place is on one disc and with a nice healthy bit rate and looking great and three of the cartoons are actually in stereophonic sound. That's particularly exciting because to hear that wonderful music and with a whole stereophonic ambiance is tremendously great. We're lucky that those tracks survived because a lot of

the audio tracks from the 1950s were victims of vinegar syndrome deterioration and did not survive. In one case, all that survived was optical, but we have max stereo on three and the rest of them sound really, really good. It's tremendous entertainment. And of course, should mention that 2025 is the 85th anniversary of Tom and Jerry, their first cartoon being 1940s push gets the boot. So there's a lot of Tom and Jerry activity happening here at Warner Brothers and we're kind of kicking it off with this release in early February. The balance of the regular Warner Archive schedule of titles at the end

of February will be something you and I will talk about on the podcast in the next couple of weeks. And I hope some really good stuff is ready by then because we've got so much in the oven right now. Just waiting for the timer to pop out of the turkey and say, it's done. I think folks are really going to be happy with this Tom and Jerry collection. CinemaScope is a way to have the cartoons be in their original aspect ratio and yet be widescreen. There was very, very minimal amount of cinemascope animation done. And I think MGM did more of it than anybody else.

People can correct me if I'm wrong, I could be wrong. But this is an impressive collection and there's some really terrific cartoons in it and I think fans are gonna be very very happy. Yeah what a way to kick off the 85th anniversary of Tom and Jerry. I know there's huge excitement so far just when you announced it for this and what a clever and great way to create a OneDisc collection here. I think it's fantastic. So well, as always, George, it's great to have you on.

Thank you so much for announcing these and providing that background that you do into what's on these releases for the fans. And obviously when the pre-orders go up, people can start to get their orders in for Tom and Jerry, and hopefully that'll lead to more this coming year. Absolutely. And we'll just say here, George, I hope you have a happy holidays here,

in case we don't talk until a little bit after. And same to you as well, and to everyone listening to the extras and all the Warner Archive supportive consumers. Thank you for sticking with us and supporting our business. We really appreciate it. For those who would like more information about the films announced today, be sure to check out our Facebook page and our Warner Archive Facebook group.

You can find the links to those on all of our social media sites in the podcast show notes. Facebook is also the best place to get the pre-order links for these titles when they become available. And speaking of the Tom and Jerry release, I hope we can get both George and Jerry Beck on to talk about that release like we have been doing for the Looney Tunes collectors choice releases. So keep an eye out for that. And if you haven't yet subscribed or followed the show, you may want

to do that so that you don't miss that podcast and many of the others that we have coming in the new year. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard, stay slightly obsessed. 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 Bros. 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.