Releasing catalogue titles which are currently in rotation on streamers has become rare. Not enough profit.
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I can’t imagine that we’ll see any of the other Blu-rays anytime soon. I doubt the Connery ones sold well enough to justify the expense.
If anything, we might see a box set with all of the films at a limited supply and an astronomical price tag sometime around the release of Amazon’s first Bond film, but, until then I doubt it. And we almost certainly won’t see any individual releases of OHMSS or Dalton’s two films.
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Two or three years ago I’d have thought there’s got to be a completist’s market for this, the fans who unscrupulously buy these editions in the best possible quality, restored to the highest standards with state-of-the-art technology. I’m sure that market still exists today but in terms of volume it’s likely no longer big enough to justify producing these in significant numbers. With economic outlooks shaky even the dedicated superfans may not be spending as much as they want to on these special editions. Difficult.
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It’s a shame, as I had been very much looking forward to seeing LTK in 4K. Looks like 1080p will have to suffice, as there’s no chance of that getting an individual release at any point.
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LTK - either alone or as double feature with TLD - would even under ideal conditions probably only come once the other films got the same treatment. If this were 2010 and the entertainment landscape still going strong this might happen in a few months if previous releases sell. As it is it doesn’t look promising, also from a general consumer perspective. The entire market for physical copies is shrinking, available income is hoovered up by competing streaming services. In the not too distant future even brand new Hollywood productions will likely not get a Blu-ray any more.
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Even just a couple of years ago, I’d have thought there’s enough appetite out there for at least a collection for Moore and Brosnan. Given that there’s already a Craig set, that would have rounded out the franchise minus Lazenby/Dalton, which, as they had done on previous platform releases, put out a smaller number of copies of those films, with OHMSS and a Dalton double-bill seeing the light of day.
Now? I’d be surprised to even see a Moore or Brosnan set, certainly not anytime in the near to intermediate future.
And, given the absurdly inflated prices these things go for, a full box set release is almost a complete nonstarter for a 25 film franchise.
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That too. The problem with the full box set is, most current fans already own one or several sets of these, the market is at least partially saturated. And the films themselves are readily accessible on numerous platforms.
New fans in their majority will be fine with just streaming. That leaves a fraction of the potential buyers that picked these up around SKYFALL. There’s really no way to predict whether any print run will even make back its cost. Plus, there’s a secondary market with used/like new box sets for a fraction of the original retail price.
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Consumers (previously known as audiences) have been groomed to just stream.
4k is for collectors only, and as Dustin said already, that market is also shrinking and thanks to the current completely unnecessary world problems money will become tighter and tighter.
So…
If one looks at the 4k releases of older movies out now or announced for the upcoming months there is a tendency to turn a release into bigger and pricier special editions containing also books and posters.
For Bond there would certainly be a market (us!), but it really would become too expensive if the whole batch of films got that treatment.
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It would appear as though I missed the boat on this, as I was hoping that the physical releases would have remained popular enough to at least get Bond in 4K before everything completely bent the knee to streaming. Although, given how out of control the streaming prices are getting, I wouldn’t be surprised to see “Cable” (in some form or another) and physical releases start to make some kind of a comeback.
The jump from VHS to DVD was a massive jump in terms of the overall quality of what we were getting, but the jump from DVD to Blu-ray/HDDVD was not the same type of leap. Yes, Blu-ray was better, but it wasn’t the same leap in quality, at least as far as I could tell. The jump to 4K, when we’re speaking about a physical release, is an entirely different ballgame, and that’s what I was holding out for.
Watching Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II on a physical 4K disc was like a revelation. They looked like brand new movies and, given how well they were made, aside from the effects used on the terror dogs in the original, the 4K didn’t expose any of the things that you might expect it would and, instead, elevated the whole experience in a way that Blu-ray was never able to. I know that seeing films like LTK, which does look cheap in some areas, wouldn’t have held up as well, but it would have been the best way to see the film and, the outdoor sequences in both the tropical and desert climates of the film could have looked amazing in the format, even if the indoor soundstage sequences would have probably suffered.
And, I think that The Living Daylights and, especially, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service would have looked amazing in the physical 4K format. The streaming 4K that we might end up seeing, not so much.
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Absolutely agreed, there’s no saying what people may turn back to in the future, just look at vinyl. And 4k may even do a lot for LICENCE TO KILL, just look at the remastered Star Trek original series, one of the most shoestring studio productions they massively improved, albeit with considerably more effort than “just” high def scanning the master negatives. But the effect is like watching - almost - a state-of-the-art 2000s production.
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I agree with Dalton. As streaming increases its dominance and cost, I think/hope people will realize that having the physical product means a) a one-time cost; and b) availability when wanted, and not dependence on when a movie is in the streaming rotation.
From the other angle, I will admit that I have begun not upgrading to 4K on certain films/filmmakers–perfectly content with my restored/upgraded Blu-ray versions. For example: I will always upgrade for Mankiewicz or Hawks, but admit I have not gone 4K for Cukor’s MY FAIR LADY. My restored Blu-ray works just fine for that film.
I found the opposite with Hitchcock in 4K. AH loved rear projection, and it was never as obvious as it now is in 4K, and this obviousness alters the experience for me. I was notably bothered by it with TORN CURTAIN. I find the Blu-ray more pleasurable to watch than the 4K. Same for the foxhunting sequence in MARNIE. I am thrown out of the Hitchcockian flow/ambience by the now jarring differences between shots.
And I am content to have it look as it did when I first saw it. My husband, on the other hand, wants everything upgraded to the sharpest/clearest it can be. He is always adjusting things on our television set to get things smooth and crisp. I am always re-adjusting them to get it back to its original state.
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With original Trek the studio/backlot atmosphere could actually work in favour of the story at times, such as with Cochrane and his companion in Metamorphosis.
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But did you see Vertigo on 4K? It is so beaufitul, this movie is already known for it’s beaufiful colours, but in 4K they look so much more bright. Maybe forget all the other Hitchcock movies, but Vertigo you have to have on 4K! I promise you will not be disappointed.
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I am not sure if 4K is finished as a physic release. Lots of stuff is still released, like Japanes stuff from Whoo (The Killer, Hard Boiled) or classics like Point Blanc and The Mechanic (the Winner/Bronson original one), so why not Bond? Bond is huge, much more than most other titles.
All those other blockbuster movies and series are already released, like Indiana Jones, Back to the Future etc, so why not Bond?
The Connery box was great last year, they now can easy release a Roger Moore boxset and later a boxset with the other guys, Lazenby, Dalton and Brosnan that makes also seven movies in a box.
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4k or normal blu-ray always depend on the quality of the transfer and the source material.
There are releases which improve the experience, and some just do not work in favour of it. Film grain can be upscaled very well or flattened miserably. Same goes for colours.
The Connery 4ks were done very well, and I suspect all Bond films could benefit from excellent transfers. But the effort and time and costs do not seem to be worth it for the powers that control the rights. They want the streaming attraction in their portfolio.
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But all Bond movies are already released in 4K. The versions we have on blu ray are 4K versions, the same with the versions which were shown in theaters the last ten years.
Never thought of that, but it makes sense.
But the question is: did Hitchcock intend them to be that bright? If he did not, then they should not be that bright, no matter how beautiful they are. Similarly, the gull cries added to the opening sequence do not belong–Hitchcock did not include them, but the restoration team did. Not sure if restoration is synonymous with alteration.
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But they still only output in 1080p on Blu-ray. The cut of the movie that is put on the disc may have been done in 4K, but it’s being output at only a 1/4 of that resolution.
The jump from 1080p to 4K is, when done correctly, much more noticeable than the jump from the sub-HD resolutions of DVD to 1080i/p of the early days of Blu-ray. The 4K Blu-rays are, far and away, the best way to watch a movie in the home that we’ve ever seen, at least on a mass scale. It’s a shame that a product as abysmally bad as streaming is beating it soundly.
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Yes!!!
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Yes, I understand, but that is not what I ment.
I ment they don’t have to get the movies in 4K they already have them waiting just to put on a 4K disc. For example I saw Spy and Eyes Only in 4K versions in the cinema when Sir Roger past away, that was in 2017, that is almost 10 years ago. In all this time they could have released them on 4K discs, like all the other classics like Indiana Jones, BTTF, Ghostbusters etc.
So the argument that it cost a lot of time and money to put the movies on 4K does not apply, the movies are already in 4K versions ready for home release.
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