About this deal
But where’s the incentive for Disney to pursue Blu-rays and 4Ks of True Lies and The Abyss? Granted, it may want to keep James Cameron happy, and there may be thinking that so much work has been done it’d be daft not to finish the discs off. Still, it’s hard to rule out that when Cameron does finally sign off the new releases of the movies, they end up on digital formats only. It’s little secret that the market for physical releases has contracted, after all. The traditional hold-up to the release thus far, though, is James Cameron himself. That he has to personally approve the new transfers for both films, and the bottom line is that he simply hasn’t to our knowledge done that yet. In more recent times, he’s been focused heavily on his quartet of Avatar sequels, as well as his work on Terminator: Dark Fate and Alita: Battle Angel (and he was active on the promotional tour for the latter two).
div>Fan-Edits & Preservations : Drsapirstein.blogspot.com
Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits has been following this story even longer than us, and his sources on the matter are better placed than ours too. But with the new Avatar film expected on disc this side of Easter, The Abyss may finally be on the verge of being announced. Looks interesting .............. am I correct in guessing that you upscaled the Japan 720p to 1080p in the remastering? In fact, that may already have happened. True Lies and The Abyss have popped up before in higher resolution on TV (in fact, there was once a digital VHS release of True Lies with a 1080i master, I’m indebted to 4K Collective for pointing out). And in particular, The Abyss appeared on HBO in the US at the end of 2019, and promisingly – as this report at Bloody Disgusting explains – it was a new 4K transfer of the film that was screened, in the correct aspect ratio. The transfer was presented in standard HD rather than Ultra HD, but it was the first sign that a new remaster was out in the open. Whether it was the same one Cameron was due to approve is unclear. Appreciating that Paramount still owns part of the rights to Titanic, the 4K disc releases of True Lies, The Abyss and Avatar are entirely on Disney’s watch. Thus far, when it does 4K reissues, it tends to be around dates for sequels and remakes to and of existing movies (the animated film of Mulan, for instance, is getting a 4K release this year to tie in with the new live action movie). Thus, it’s entirely likely that Avatar will get a reissue when the first of the many sequels arrives (currently scheduled for the end of next year).
The story of the Ghostbusters videogame that never was
And there it was, in colour. Remastering work on The Abyss was being undertaken, and here was the fresh evidence of it. That was over a year ago, and we’re going to go out on a limb and suggest that it’s not taken all that time to complete. The studio time had been booked, the colour grading at the very least is – on the technical side – complete. div>Fan-Edits & Preservations : Drsapirstein.blogspot.com
E ver since James Cameron had adopted the use of the Super 35 format, he'd been framing for both widescreen and television safe, and there has been quite some discussion about how that sometimes compromises the compositions for one or the other more than if he just committed to framing specifically for one ratio. The pan-and-scan formatting often might improve a shot (e.g. the visibility of Jamie Lee Curtis' legs flailing as she hangs from the helicopter in a shot in True Lies , which adds an element of helplessness absent from the widescreen presentation). I would therefore be quite interested to see what this film looks like with a somewhat taller frame. Blu-Ray B uses the only true HD source of the film available (a flawed Japanese HD broadcast with an erroneous color grading, which had to be slightly cropped to get rid of the network’s logo and the Japanese hardsubs), restored with a more coherent color grading and fully remastered. bigrob, you know that I'm interesting in doing that one... if Doc could make an unapproved 2.70:1 version, who am I to NOT do an approved 1.90:1 version based on laserdisc? ( As things stand, amongst the work of James Cameron, even Piranha II now has a decent Blu-ray release, courtesy of Shout Factory in America. But in the case of The Abyss, True Lies, Titanic and Avatar, these were all made under a deal with 20 th Century Fox. And as we understand it, that deal (and Fox is where he had his production deal for over 20 years) gives him final approval on the way those films are presented on disc, and what extra features are included. All were due to be released under the Fox Home Entertainment label. But now, Fox is part of the Disney empire. But again, follow the evidence and the timeline here. At the end of 2018, the transfers were ready for review, by his own words. Is it too much of a leap to suggest that he’s approved at least the one for The Abyss, given that the subsequent colour grading was allowed to go ahead? It’s not just the transfers, either. In 2017, The Digital Bits reported that“the work needed to compile new special features” had been done as well. That’s not actually the compiling of the features themselves, but more putting together what the shape of the eventual discs would be like.div> “Dr. Sapirstein delivers all the society babies. He’s one of the finest obstetricians in the country.” - Minnie Castevet