Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment will bring Ed Wood to Blu-ray later this year. The second screen collaboration between director Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands) and actor Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street) takes inspiration from the life and work of Edward D. Wood Jr., a filmmaker responsible for some of the worst movies ever made.
Ed Wood follows Wood (Depp) from his Hollywood beginnings as a struggling playwright and aspiring director through the filming of his "masterpiece," the hilariously inept sci-fi chiller Plan 9 From Outer Space. Burton puts a particular focus on the many production obstacles Wood faced while making his movies as well as the tender friendship he cultivated with fading screen legend Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau, Rounders).
Hopefully it has all the extras ported over. Well except for that one they were forced to recall the DVD over. I don't mind losing that though for an upgrade to Blu-ray.
@ insomniac. It's Disney. I don't believe they've ever done a digibook or steelbook, even with their animated titles where they actually make an effort. Disney was one of, if not THE last major studio to support anamorphic enhancement with dvd and a studio that obviously still thinks even 15 year old masters QC'd on small monitors, below 1080p resolution, are good enough for BD. Hopefully Ed Wood will fair better than their norm for non-animated catalog releases, as I believe the film may have been remastered within the past decade. Barely within though, so it's still a toss of the dice.
When the Buena Vista DVD came out on these shores, much ahead of the US market by the way, there was a noticeable tear when Ed Wood was talking with the "crap" film producer. I wonder if they corrected the frame before releasing it on Blu.
The original DVD included a 9 min. featurette called "When Carol Met Larry", a short introspective about cross-dressers. Apparently, Tim Burton himself disliked this feature and ordered them removed from the discs just after the first batch was released to the public. Those DVD's were recalled and quickly became collector's items.
A neat trick is that it seems that most DVD's still had the file locked away on its disc, so you could essentially rip the files to your computer and find the featurette somewhere in the mess.
It's pretty much assured that this won't be included on the blu, but it would be neat as it became a sort of holy grail for some collectors back in the day, prices went easily for a $150 on eBay.
One of my all time favorite films! This will be a day one buy without a doubt. Depp and Burton are at the top of there game in this one. Can't wait to complete the Burton Blu-ray collection... that is until Dark Shadows is released.
definitely on my top 10 best movies of the 90's list, burton's best alongside Batman and Sleepy Hollow. I hope Disney give it some sort of special treatment, both A&V wise and in the specialfeatures department, the film the truly deserve it.
I generally like Tim Burton but, interestingly enough, I've never gotten around to seeing Ed Wood. Maybe I'll do a blind buy of this much-loved film. After the Disney's surprising a.v. quality debacle with The Color of Money, however, I'll need to wait for a review and maybe a price drop.
Finally, time to complete my Tim Burton Blu Ray collection!This is one of the best Burton films and definitely one of my favorite films of all time! Excited to see the beautiful black and white in glorious high definition.
