The Extras - Warner Archive May Release Announcement Part 2: Rhapsody In Blue & High Society 4K

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Send us a textWarner Archive's May releases feature two significant musical films: a restored pre-release version of "Rhapsody in Blue" with 13 additional minutes only shown to WWII soldiers, and the long-awaited 4K release of "High Society" featuring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Grace Kelly.• "Rhapsody in Blue" restoration includes footage cut before 1945 theatrical release• Film features people who knew Gershwin playing themselves including Oscar Levant and Al Jolson• Restored Porgy and Bess sequence with original Broadway actress Anne Brown expanded from 90 seconds to 4-5 minutes• Includes 10+ minute overture created for original theatrical screenings• "High Society" arrives in 4K from VistaVision negative with Dolby Atmos and original mono audio options• Cole Porter wrote original songs for the film including "True Love," which became a platinum record for Grace Kelly• This was Grace Kelly's final Hollywood film before becoming Princess of Monaco• VistaVision horizontal format provides exceptional clarity without distortion• Warner Archive offers both 4K/Blu-ray combo pack and standalone Blu-ray options for consumersWe appreciate your support of Warner Archive Collection as we continue to preserve and restore classic films with the highest technical standards possible.Pre-order links are not yet available.If you missed it, listen to Part 1 of the May Release Announcement - episode 177 REVIEW - THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE with Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast.The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog Group As an Amazon Affiliate, The Extras may receive a commission for purchases through our purchase links. There is no additional cost to you, and every little bit helps us in the production of the podcast. Thanks in advance. Otaku 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. [e-mail]

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. Hi, Tim Lard here, host of The Extras podcast. And this is part two of my discussion with George Feltenstein of the May Blu-ray releases coming from the Warner Archive. We have two films we'll be talking about. We'll be talking about Rhapsody in Blue and following that is our discussion about the second 4k release from the Warner Archive and that's High Society. Well George the

next film we're gonna talk about is one that you did mention in a previous podcast, and that is Rhapsody in Blue from 1945. Ok, tell us about this release, George. A lot of work has gone into it and it was almost something that I never thought would happen, because what we're releasing is effectively the pre-release version. And as we record this podcast, it's just a few weeks prior to when I'll have the honor of introducing it's being shown at the TCM Film Festival on April 26th. And this is a version of Rhapsody in Blue that contains about 13 additional minutes

which were cut out of the film before it was theatrically released by Warner Brothers in 1945. This film went into production in 1943 and was completed, I believe, by the end of 1943. It was a very expensive film to make. And Jack Warner selected this and a few other films to hold back from general release so that there'd be a better chance of recouping high production costs by releasing after World War II ended, which was not guaranteed when that would happen, but there was a sensibility that the Allies were closer to victory, first in Europe and then again in Asia. I believe the film in its theatrical version opened before the complete end of the war. I think it opened in New York and Los Angeles in June of 45. And, you know, the war ended a few months after. But their

decision to remove 13 minutes from the film was preceded by the fact that they had sent the completed film to the soldiers, to the armed forces, in between that time. So during 1944, there were 16 millimeter prints of the film as it was intended and as it was completed and shown to the soldiers. The studio decided to cut the film down because the length of the film, which around 150-151 minutes before they did the editing, that was frightening to Warner Brothers. They didn't like films that were too long because the short of the film you can get more shows in the day. And of course the most tragic example

of that kind of cutting happened with the 1954 Star is Born. And that's very legendary what happened there and it basically ruined what George Cugar intended with that movie. With Rhapsody in Blue, I had known and read that there was this pre-release version, but there was no trace of it. I never thought we would be able to find the missing footage, but I didn't give up. What gave me the clue was I was producing a Gershwin in Hollywood 2 CD set of soundtrack recordings for our joint venture that we had with Rhino Records. It was George and I were Gershwin in Hollywood. And for that release, was George and I were Gershwin in Hollywood. And for that release, I was able to locate playback discs

that had been, you know, representing what was prerecorded here. And I knew that there were longer versions of certain numbers. And I had read about these, you know, earlier versions of the film. So we weren't really lucking out in our search, and I'm talking about over many, many years. We released a DVD of this film in 2012, which was a new

Master at the time, and it wasn't Blu-ray quality, but it was pretty good. We were coming off a new film element, a fine grain that was made from the camera negative, and we spent a lot of time on the audio and making it perfect, and we added to the beginning of the film an overture that runs over 10 minutes that was created especially for the New York and Hollywood engagements of the film. And a 10-minute overture, I can't think of any film that

has an overture that's over 10 minutes and this clocks in just a little over 10 minutes. little over 10 minutes. And it really is a tribute to Ray Hindorf, who was the arranger and really the musical genius behind the musicality of this film that created this overture. And the Warner Brothers Orchestra was just amazing. So this overture we added to the movie, we put out the DVD. The DVD did really well, but I still wanted to be able to get to Blu-ray, to come off the original camera negative, and to find that missing footage. So our preservation department brought in elements

from all over the country, all these different versions, because everything was marked the same number of reels, but we didn't know footage count. And thankfully, we found a nitrate lavender fine grain in the Warner Brothers collection that's on deposit at UCLA, where the stewards of some of our nitrate. Sure enough, we did have a composite fine grain, that means the audio is with it. We were able to put everything together for the best possible quality,

and put the whole film back together as it was originally shown to the soldiers before it was cut up. And we've added the overture at the beginning so that brings us in at a whopping somewhere between 161 or 162 minutes. So the reason that there's nothing extra on this disc aside from the trailer is that I wanted to make sure we had enough space for absolute impeccable bitrate. So it's going to look and sound magnificent. I'm not even really talking about the movie. Now I'll talk about the movie. The musical biographies of which we've talked about on these extras podcasts when we were releasing things like Words and Music and Three Little Words, generally the Hollywood

composer biography movie would be highly fictionalized but have wonderful musical moments. And that's really the case here because the story of George Gershwin, aside from the tragic fact of his death at age 38 from a brain tumor, his actual life story was not full of that much conflict. He didn't have tragic romances. He had plenty of very devoted girlfriends. He was quite a ladies man. And I say that as a compliment, not in any kind of derogatory way. There were many women in his life who loved him very much and he loved them back. But his passion was music and the film captures that essence of his passion for music. And the studio considered casting, you know, a more famous person in the role of George Gershwin.

And they came up with a New York stage discovery, Robert Alda signed him to a studio contract. And this was to be his breakout film. And if the name Alda you're asking, yes, it is Alan Alda's father. And he was here at Warner Brothers for several years, and then went back to the New York stage. He opened the original production of Guys and Dolls, Sky Masterson. He was in other big plays and shows as well. But this was his big break in Hollywood.

And playing the two romantic interests in this film are Alexis Smith, who is always gorgeous and always wonderful, and Joan Leslie, who's always adorable and who doesn't do her own singing. She was dubbed by a vocal teacher, actually. The woman was a teacher in her later life. I don't know about earlier life,

but a woman named Sally Sweetland. She sounded exactly like Joan Leslie's speaking voice, which is very interesting. Oscar Levant, the amazing wit and rock-on-tour, and sometimes actor, brilliant pianist, composer. Oscar Levant was George Perschman's best friend in real life and he plays himself in the movie and he's terrific. And probably the most exceptional parts of this movie are when

we get to see people who actually were involved in playing themselves in performing Gershwin music. And Gershwin's first big hit song was Swanny, which he didn't write with his brother Ivar. He wrote it with Irving Caesar in 1919, and Al Jolson recreates his stage performance of Swanee in this movie. And what Gershwin was about was he was fascinated with jazz and he wanted to kind of merge where American popular music was going in the late teens and early 20s and infuse into it jazz rhythms and different sonic formulations of chords and sounds.

And he always wanted to strive for something different, as well as writing some of the greatest American popular songs of all time with his brother Ira. And in 1924, he was commissioned to write basically an orchestral piece that would be artistic and yet groundbreaking. And he wrote and yet groundbreaking and he wrote the composition Rhapsody in Blue which had its premiere at the Aeolian Hall in 1924 and was performed by Paul Whiteman who was a very very famous orchestra slash band leader at the time. And Paul Whiteman plays himself in the movie. So they recreate the, you know, first performance of Rapsy and Blue in the movie. And, uh, it's quite thrilling to see all these people who in real life.

Add a place in George Gershwin's life story and performances. And my favorite person being in this movie is Anne Brown, who was the original lead actress in Porgy and Bess. She played Bess when Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway in 1935. She is in a sequence that is an homage to Portia and Bess, and she sings summertime. The character of Bess didn't sing summertime at the beginning of Portia and Bess. She sang a reprise. But for this movie, they fudged it a little and it worked beautifully. This

is the one thing in the movie that got hit with the butcher knife. And the Portia Invest excerpt in the released film was like a minute and a half. And here, I believe it's between four and five minutes and does the greatness of Portie and Bess, which I think is one of the greatest pieces of American music ever created. It gets its proper place in this newly restored, reconstructed version of the film, because it's not just a blip on the radar, they really pay more

attention to it. And Poor U.S. was not a commercial success when it opened. People didn't know if it was opera and they didn't think it was highbrow enough for opera and it was too highbrow for Broadway. And it was really only after Gershwin's death that there were several revivals that made it more popular. But really it wasn't until the 1970s that the whole thing was reconstructed and performed. Portia Besson eventually made it to Broadway in 1976 as originally completely written without edits and was a absolute critical success.

And that was almost 40 years after Gershwin's death. Since then, it's been performed at the Metropolitan Opera and operas all over the world. And so that is my personal favorite thing about the restored longer cut is getting to see Portia Vesca and its due and the story of Gershwin. But the film also covers all the great popular songs he wrote. There are fictitious characters throughout. Gershwin had more than one brother. He had a second brother, brother Arthur not mentioned in the movie

He had a sister Francis not mentioned in the movie. So the scenario is Not very accurate it's fictionalized But it has just enough truth to it To be a cohesive work and it is an entertaining movie. But the star of the movie is the music of George Gershwin as arranged and performed by the Warner Brothers Orchestra and the Warner Brothers Music Department. Because not only did you have Ray Hindorf conducting the orchestra and doing the arrangements, but Max Steiner, the great Max Steiner, probably the most beloved of the Warner Brothers composers,

and of course the writer of the score for Dawn with the Wind, Max Steiner did the underscoring for this movie, weaving in Gershwin melodies in between his own original pieces. Just as Steiner did with In Gone with the Wind, he mixed together Civil War songs like Dixie and so forth and so on within the score of his original pieces. Steiner took the Gershwin melodies and interwoven them with his own compositions. So it was a work of tremendous commitment by the studio to try to pay tribute to the amazing, albeit brief, life of George Gershwin. And while it may not be factually accurate to the nth degree, it has enough truth in it and so much great music. And best of all, this new master is gorgeous. It's a quantum leap

from our not so bad looking DVD. It is sensational and I'll be very excited to see how a live audience responds to it at the TCM Festival. But to know that people will be able to buy this Blu-ray, But to know that people will be able to buy this Blu-ray, which comes from a 4K scan of the camera negative and the found footage, and be able to have it on their shelf instead of it languishing in a vault that nobody knew it was there. This is what the work we do here is so rewarding. And to be able to share that with the fans and with cinephiles and musical people of all different ages. This is a celebration of the great American songbook just from one composer. And I do hope people enjoy the release.

I love the fact George that this is really this version, this extended pre-release version is first time on on physical media. It's first time really no one has seen this except for, sorry obviously the people who've been working on it here have seen it, but the public never got to see this version. The only people who did were our fighting men and women overseas in 1944 and people who worked on the movie in 1943. It's exceptional. I mean, it's so great that the Warner Archive is releasing this that you knew about it so you could go look for it. Because otherwise, like you said, it would

be languishing in storage. People were looking at me cross-eyed like, no, it doesn't exist. I had a feeling that it might. And there are other films where we have found additional footage and there will be one of those coming out hopefully later on this year, which we'll be talking about in a couple of months. That's exciting. It's not as substantial a find, but it's a little bit of extra, which is never a bad thing. Especially when you're talking about a great piece of entertainment. You've had more than a minute to,

you've had some with five, six, some fairly extensive extended versions recently. So they're always exciting. Always exciting when you find these in the vaults, so to speak. It's great when there's discoveries like that. And I do have to say that this would not be possible without the wonderful people at UCLA Film and Television Archive. It would not be possible without our magical artists at Warner

Brothers Motion Picture Imaging and the Warner Brothers Preservation Department. Everybody collaborated on this and that we get to bring it to the public. There are so many jewels in our library and nobody thinks of Rhapsody in Blue is a cinematic masterpiece, and I'll be the first person to acknowledge it's not. It's not a great piece of cinema per se. What it is is really good entertainment highlighted by amazing great musical performances. In this extended state with the overture, it has much more substance. And we're very proud to be bringing it to the home viewer.

Well, George, last on our list to talk about here today is your second 4K release from the Warner Archive. I'm excited to hear about this and what you can tell us about this one. 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, people have been asking for this movie

just on Blu-ray alone since the format began. And it was, I would say, probably the most It was, I would say, probably the most quizzical omission to the musicals that we've made available on Blu-ray, especially from MGM. Why wasn't High Society available? in 2003 and a very archaic HD master was created for that DVD, but it was grainy, it had all sorts of color breathing issues, it just, it was, we could not have put that on Blu-ray. We just could not, unless we didn't care about our consumers. This needed to look great. And frankly, the technology was not available to make it look great.

We could have made it look better than the DVD master. And that DVD master in its high definition form has been what people have seen on television and have been able to... There's been no work done on the film since 2003 until now. I see people writing about, oh, I saw a different, better, high society. No, it's always been this version. If there's been any HD broadcast or download or stream, it's always come from this same master that was created in 2003. And the very nature of it being VistaVision really called out for us to be able to step up to the plate.

And it's not a secret that recently Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging made the investment in the ability to scan this division and Technorama film elements, which go through horizontally as opposed to vertically. With that enlarged frame, you get unprecedented as they used to say, motion picture high fidelity. But the depth of field, the sharpness without the distortion that early cinemascope lenses brought to cinemascope movies. This is why the searchers looked so wonderful. We went back to the negative on that film and it was handled frame by frame to be the best that it could be. And the same thing

goes for high society. There are some really ugly blown up optical shots of Newport, Rhode Island at the beginning of the movie don't look good. There's no way we could ever make them look good because they were blown up from traditional 35 millimeter film. And people weren't as picky back then as they are now. And people forgave, you know, things that were dupey looking opticals.

But that and two long second unit shots in the movie are the only detriments that can't be fixed. That's the way the movie was made, but the rest of it looks unbelievable. And the color is it looks unbelievable. The color is vivid and beautiful. You see how much work went into this. And of course you've got this combination of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Grace Kelly,

along with Louis Armstrong, and Cole Porter having written the original score. This is one of those rare MGM musicals that didn't come from Arthur Fried and it didn't come from Joe Pastranac. It didn't come from Jack Cummings. Saul Siegel, who had been producing films at Fox like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and There's No Business Like Show Business, he intended to send up an independent production unit at MGM, but he eventually became the head of the studio. But it was a combination of MGM's management at the time, the studio was run by Dori Sherry when the project began, they

wanted to revisit properties that they owned that they could remake as musicals. The idea of making the Philadelphia story into a musical and having Cole Porter write the music was Siegel's and he went to Doris Sher Charried MGM and the whole thing got greenlit. What is interesting is that they were originally talking about casting people like Howard Keele, possibly Elizabeth Taylor, possibly Ann Miller. I've gone through all the production documents through all the production documents to see how it came to be. And it just so happened that Bing Crosby ended his almost 24-year relationship with Paramount where he had been on exclusive contract and with the exception of a few loanouts, he lived at Paramount from 1932 until 1955.

And he was a free man and he got signed to play the role of CK Dexter Haven. And it was a big deal for him. He was not happy at Paramount in the later years. He didn't like even his huge hit White Christmas, which made a ton of money and is beloved by everyone, you know, these days, and was beloved by audiences when it came out. But Bing himself thought the picture was not as well written as it could have been.

He was disappointed and he really wanted better scripts and the opportunity of being in high society was one that he found irresistible. But having come from Paramount Pictures, he asked the MGM management to not make this movie in cinemascope but to use VistaVision because he loved VistaVision with White Christmas having been the first VistaVision feature and then he also did a film right before he left Paramount, a remake of Anything Goes that he was not particularly thrilled with, but he loved VistaVision. So MGM literally had to switch course as they were planning to make the film in

CineScope and I found a memo in the files from the head of the technical department who is warning them, if you make this film at VistaVision, you realize you won't be able to have four-track magnetic stereophonic soundtrack, which is really essential for a great musical. VistaVision did not allow for magnetic stereo.

It used, at times, something called Perspective Sound, which was optical audio mono that was moved around the theater with inaudible tones, bass tones, that would move the dialogue or the music in three places around the theater. It was very gimmicky, but it was much cheaper for theater owners to install than having to install magnetic reproduction equipment in their projection. So High Society was recorded for the intention of stereo, and it was released basically mono or the Prospecta optical sound which moved the mono around the theater. But what we're doing here is we're including the original mono optical track without any gimmicks around it so people can see the movie and hear the movie as it was originally. They have a choice.

And then what we've also done is made a very large investment in doing a Dolby Atmos track coming from the multi-channel magnetic stereo recordings that were done for all the music in the film. It was interesting that they pre-record the numbers early before a film gets into production. Underscoring happens usually after the film is mostly completed. And MGM was smart, They recorded all the underscoring

stereo as well. Someone probably had the foresight to realize that when you have a film with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong, you're going to want to have stereo recordings. And that actually panned out for us many years later. In 1991, I oversaw a release of the film on Laserdisc. And there was a veteran member of the MGM Sound Department who was working at Turner Entertainment Company at the time. And we collaborated to build a stereophonic soundtrack for High Society for its laser disc release in 1991. The man's

name was Scott Perry. He was a wonderful guy and I learned so much from him about how MGM recorded their music and how they cataloged it and what the code numbers mean for scenes and so forth and so on. It was invaluable in helping me be able to do all the soundtrack CD compilations I produced in our joint venture with Rhino and the stereophonic tracks we were able to mix for films that didn't get a stereo release like Athena and Deep in My Heart. When you have the stereo music, you can do wonderful things that enhance the experience. But as is now a policy here at the studio, we want to include the original mono track so that the

purist who wants to see it as it was seen in 1956 can have that mono experience. And it hasn't been available as a mono track since the days of VHS beta and the first laser disc from the 80s. So we like people to have their choice and to get back to the film itself they use the essence of the Philadelphia story plot, moved it to Newport, Rhode Island, so they could infuse the then new Newport Jazz Festival into the story and bring Louis Armstrong and his band as a kind of Greek chorus that kind of comments from the film. Louis opens the film, Louis ends the film, and Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby became very good friends in the 1930s, and had worked together in the 1930s. And to see them perform now you as Jazz in this movie is one of the highlights.

And of course the other highlight is, or one of many, is the supposed rivalry between Sinatra and Crosby. They actually were very, very good friends and always had gotten along. And to put the two of them together in the movie was like, it's never happened before. You know, MGM really went crazy in the promotion of it. And then last but not least, this was the last film to be made in Hollywood by Grace Kelly before she became Princess Grace of Monaco.

And literally, as soon as they finished the last shot of this movie, she was on the plane getting ready to be married in Monaco and never returned to Hollywood after that as an actress. There is supposedly, and it may even be true, that Hitchcock desperately tried to lure her back to play Mourney in 1964, but was not successful. I don't think Prince Rainier was hip to the idea of his princess being back in the movie business. But though her screen career was short, Grace Kelly's performances are radiant and she was terrific in this movie.

She's really not only so beautiful, but she had hard shoes to fill playing the lead role of Tracy Lord, given that Catherine Hepburn had starred in the role on Broadway and then in the film version in 1940 of the Philadelphia story. But I love her take on the character. I think she's terrific in it. And her chemistry with Crosby is terrific. Her chemistry with Sinatra is terrific. She had worked with Bing Crosby prior in The Country Girl, which she made at Paramount in 1954. And that was a very dark, serious drama. And there was just a good chemistry between the two of them. So everything I've been able to discern about the making of this movie is that everybody had a great deal of fun. That there were no problems making this movie. There were no conflicts making this movie.

Everybody loved Louis Armstrong and being on the set. And the whole collegial nature of it was wonderful. And I would be remiss if I didn't also mention Celeste Holm, who plays the photographer girlfriend of Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Embry. She's terrific in it too. The score by Cole Porter, with one exception, is all original songs that were written for the movie. The song, True Love, which Bing Crosby sings with an assist vocally from Miss Grace Kelly went on to be a million selling single record. And Grace Kelly was probably the only royal princess to have a platinum record on her wall. But it was a hit song, beautiful ballad.

And the one song that was not original for the movie was the duet sung by Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Well, did you ever? That song was written for the 1939 Broadway musical, Do Barry Was a Lady. Cole Porter had composed a song for Crosby and Sinatra, we're supposed to sing something else that Cole Porter wrote that no one was particularly thrilled with. And I think it was Saul Chaplin who was one of the musical supervisors on the movie along with the great Johnny Green who was the head of the MJ musical department and a great composer in his own right. Saul Chaplin came up with the

idea of hey hey, what about this song, well, did you ever? And of course, it created one of the classic moments of the screen. And according to his, there's a wonderful documentary about Bing Crosby called Bing Crosby Rediscovered. I believe that's the title. It was made by my good friend Robert Trachtenberg, who I worked with on several documentaries in early years. And according to his documentary,

Bing thought that was like his best musical moment on the screen ever, Singing with Sinatra, his favorite musical number of all the ones that he did. And it shows on the screen. And you've got Charles Walters behind the camera as director. Charles Walters came to MGM as a stage choreographer, staged a lot of musical numbers in other films, graduated to being a director.

His first film, Good News, 1947, and became a stalwart director at MGM for not just musicals but also comedies. He directed The Tender Trap with Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, and Celeste Holm right before he made High Society a year later. There was a ready relationship with Celeste Holm and Frank Sinatra. I love the movie and the fact that now people have been screaming, where's the Blu-ray? Where's the Blu-ray? Well, guess what? You're getting a Blu-ray and a 4K.

And the fact that we could do the 4K Blu-ray combo as we did with the searchers. And I must underscore the importance of the fact that the encoding is being done, the compression and authoring by the encoding is being done, the compression and authoring by the great David McKenzie at Fidelity in Motion, that ensures the highest quality because I think he's the best in the business at what he does in creating a disk image. We have not a lot of supplementary material. As of right now, it looks like we're gonna have three trailers, three different trailers.

This is all being solidified as we speak. We have a feature that we created for the DVD 10, no, more than 20 years ago with Celeste Holm. And she was aging at that point, you know, she was advanced in age and her voice was a little thin but her manner was very charming. The feature is less than 10 minutes long and it actually perfectly encapsulates all the different aspects of how this film came to be, how it was made, all the little details and things that I've just mentioned in the space of less than 10 minutes.

It's a very good featurette and it's being upconverted to, I believe, high definition. And this will be on both the Blu-ray and the 4K, all these things. And just like the DVD, I'm putting in the Droopy cartoon in CinemaScope, Millionaire Droopy in high definition, so that everything that was on the DVD, including the Gallup premiere footage, everything that was on the DVD, including the Gala premiere footage, everything that was on the DVD plus more in terms of the multiple trailers, will be on the 4K and the Blu-ray. The 4K will be a BD-100 at a very high bitrate, and the Blu-ray will be a BD50. For those of you who are not yet to 4k, that will be at a very high bitrate. It will look great. And we're offering the combo and

a standalone Blu-ray so that people aren't forced into having to buy a more expensive to buy a more expensive combo pack if they just want, if they're content with Blu-ray. And Blu-ray is still pretty magnificent. And the Dolby Atmos and Mono tracks will be on both discs. We of course have a nice slip sleeve and the inside wrap of the 4k will be the key art with yellow, as will be on the Blu-ray. And then the outer slip sleeve will be the key art in blue. MGM used both, because they're both authentic key arts, but I thought it would be fun to have a little differentiation. Dolby Vision on the 4K, along with HDR10 of course, that ensures even greater solidification of an excellent presentation.

I do want to mention, everybody's starting to theorize, what's Warner Archive going to do in 4K? I did mention that we would be leaning towards wide format films, but we're still a Blu-ray business and Blu-ray is magnificent and we intend our Blu-rays to be gorgeous. And when you watch them on your 4K player and a 4K TV, especially in the case of older films that don't have 4,000 pixels on their film elements, then you're going to be just fine.

But there still will be occasional 4Ks from us, but it is not our primary business. And it will not be primary to only wide format films. The mothership is still going to pull the heavy load when it comes to bringing more 4k catalog titles and I'm here to support them in any way I can. I am involved in discussions and recommendations but what Warner Archive will do is try to pull out all the stops so that every 4K we release, just like we try to do with every Blu-ray, is the best that it can be and have lots of chapters. Right.

Well this is an amazing sounding release, just like you did with the very first one in the searchers. I love all of the audio that you're putting together as the options. Of course, this scan of the master is fantastic. And just having the old extras here, you know, making sure that they're upresident on these as well. It's fantastic. And I love these combos where you get the 4K and Blu-ray and then you also can just have the standalone Blu-ray. That to me is really saying,

hey, we're looking out for you, the fan, the consumer, so that you have the option based on what you have at home. I mean, in all the different formats that I've been involved with as the video business has changed, we're always trying to do the best we can. And the more the technology evolves, the more we can increase the quality of what we can deliver. And you know, not everything is going to be a home run, but if I have to, I'll settle for a triple, if that's the best that we

could do, you know, when you're dealing with the best element on something being four generations away. But generally, we've been very fortunate in finding wonderful sources and the fact that we don't use any automated techniques to do anything. Everything is done meticulously by hand. The artisans at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging make an invaluable contribution to every release that we put out. And in the case when we do 4Ks, I intend to continue our harmonious relationship with the magnificent David Mackenzie at Fidelity in Motion. People who don't understand how important the quality of authoring and compression and encoding are really need to understand this man is a wizard. And I know that he has a huge fan base. He's a superstar to

video files who really want their presentations to be the best that they can be. So we could do a great master and have it fudged up by misses in authoring and encoding. We haven't been affected by that too terribly, but there have been a couple of times where we had to go back and fix things. Working with David, we know that what he delivers is nothing that needs to be fixed. It's a great honor. And I'm very excited about this month's releases and we've got so much in the oven right now that we're working on. I think a lot of people are gonna be really happy

with what's to come. That doesn't mean that there won't be consistent complaints from all quarters of the globe, but we're really trying to do our best for you, the consumer that supports the Warner Archive. Well, George, as I always say, after we do these podcasts, especially these announcement podcasts,

it's such a thrill to have you on and to have you explain and give all this background. I love it, I learned so much and I know that the listeners do as well. So thank you for carving out time to do that and to speak directly to the people who buy the Warner Archive product. Well, thank you, Tim,

and thank you to our customers of the Warner Archive collection. We appreciate your support. We'll help you enjoy that discussion with George. collection. We appreciate your support. We hope you enjoyed that discussion with George. Now this was part two of our discussion of the May releases. So if you haven't yet listened to part one which was released just a few days ago. Until next time you've been listening to Tim slightly obsessed. Looney Tunes fan, it has everything that you want in a Looney Tunes movie. It has the gags, it has funny, it has silly, and it was great to see in the audience there you had people who were very young and of course you had all the 45 and up crowd, those who grew up with Looney Tunes, and it was great fun to see both age groups laughing

at the appropriate places at the appropriate gags. And I could just tell that those folks that I used to work with, some of them that I knew, who worked on this film over at Warner Brothers Animation, they really put their heart and soul into this, and they really wanted to stay true to the Looney Tunes ethic that was established back in the 30s and 40s, in the classic days of Looney Tunes and

Looney Tunes means so much to Warner Brothers. So it was great to see the work that they did in this film and Daffy Porky Pig Are the stars of this show? There is no Bugs Bunny. Petunia Pig is also in there But if you enjoy those characters, they are very fun and it's a great teaming up. But it's a lot of fun if you've been thinking, I don't know, do I wanna deal with the hassle of going to the theater? You know what, if you're a fan of Looney Tunes,

I hope you will, because this film does need your support. It doesn't have a big budget. It has not had the marketing budget that typically would go into a Warner Brothers release because it is being distributed by Ketchup Entertainment. So I hope that if you are a Looney Tunes fan that you will go out and support this film. You'll go to the theaters and already the film is being released on Blu-ray here in the United States at least. I know it's only in the theaters here in the United States but go to the theater support it if you

enjoy it then buy the Blu-ray. That pre-order is ready it's going to be coming out sometime in May but please get to the theater support it there that always helps the downstream release on Blu-ray but it also will help Ketchup Entertainment know that they can take this to Europe, to the UK and to the rest of the world where I know there are so many Looney Tunes fans as well. I think you'll really enjoy it and you'll have a good time enjoying seeing some of your favorite Looney Tunes characters on the big screen.