It’s been an interesting time in the world of 4K Blu-ray. There has been recent news that several critically acclaimed, award nominated movies will not be getting a 4K Blu-ray release, or even any type of physical release in some cases. But, there are also instances where movies being decimated by critics and audiences alike are somehow getting the 4K Blu-ray treatment.
Take, for instance, All of Us Strangers and Madame Web.
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All of Us Strangers received universal critical acclaim for its powerful story and incredible acting, particularly from Scott. It has been nominated for a slew of awards, including several BAFTAs. Madame Web, on the other hand, is being savaged by critics and audience members alike. It currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 15% and 59% from critics and audiences respectively, with many citing the poor writing, bad effects and overall dull feel.
Yet, only one of these movies is getting a 4K Blu-ray release: Madame Web. All of Us Strangers, on the other hand, isn’t getting a physical release at all (as reported by World of Reel). I admittedly have not seen either of these movies, but from what I’ve read and what I’ve been told by people who’ve seen it, All of Us Strangers belongs on 4K Blu-ray and it’s a crime that it’s not.
I don’t want to speak for anyone, but from what I read in several comment sections and forums such as Reddit, home theater fans and cinephiles are not okay with the fact that this is the state of 4K Blu-ray and physical media releases at the moment. So just what is going on?
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This isn’t the first time this has happened in recent memory. It was announced that Best Picture Oscar-nominated movies Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, and The Holdovers, starring Paul Giamatti, will only be getting standard Blu-ray releases, not 4K. These movies are both generating a lot of buzz in the awards scene, with both Stone and Giamatti already having won best actor Golden Globes, and yet movie fans won’t get to enjoy them at home in their best possible quality.
Barbarian, starring Bill Skarsgård, is another movie that has been seemingly denied a physical release (as a press release mentioned a streaming date only). And Barbarian is a cult horror movie – a genre that particularly suits 4K Blu-ray and physical media – that has enjoyed great success. Understandably, fans in forums far and wide have cried out for a physical copy.
These are the kind of movies the best 4K Blu-ray players were made for. Home theater fans, in general, are movie-goers, and they will be wanting to add these movies to their collections, but can’t as it stands. What connects three of these four movies? You guessed it, they’re all owned by Disney. (The Holdovers is from Focus Features).
Saving them up for the soon to be announced super-platinum streaming tier?
The return of the Disney vault awaits even more insidious DRM… which reminds me, there is some kind of secure streaming platform for the ultra wealthy, I can’t remember the name but as long as we’re manufacturing outrage here, I’m curious if any of these film were offered there at 4K?
I probably can’t find an actual answer… but I’m going to see if I can find an article on RichFlix™ so I don’t sound like an angry crank myself ;-)
Edit:
It’s called PRIMA Cinema
I always wondered why super rich people didn’t just setup the theatre equipment and then just license the movie directly from the studio like a regular movie theater does.
Turns out that’s exactly what they do, although they do it cheaper and through a middleman
$35,000 for the device, $500 for only new movies still in theatres…requires thumbprint and unique watermark and has accelerometers to stop if it detects that it has been moved…
Completely ridiculous. I don’t think I’d go for this even if I had access to unlimited money.
Pffffff how much does a bananna cost anyway, $20? It’s chump change, a set of matching luggage for the Bentley costs half that.
But yeah, I think the thumb print scanner was a bit much ;-)
The fingerprint and accelerometer sound over the top until you realize they have to be able to convince the studios to offer this to their customers in the first place. It was probably one of the ways they got the contract.
No doubt in my mind.
It is for the kind of person who has a yacht, a private jet and probably their own island.
And it even had my answer (circa 2015):
While all of this sounds like a crazy amount of effort to go through, PRIMA is apparently popular as hell. The movies reportedly look good, though they’re not 4K yet, and they can’t make them fast enough—there’s a waiting list to score one of these bad boys. Then again, if I had unlimited financial resources, like more money than I knew what to do with, I would probably get in line.
Edit:
It’s called PRIMA Cinema
Great thanks for that.
I did a quick Google and it seems like that system never really got off the ground but I did find this thread where they discuss similar set-ups that are available: Bel Air Cinema and Red Carpet Cinema, but that last link isn’t working so…
Ahhh good old “reference quality”hard to beat but impossible to define ;-) And I can’t see what I’m writing anymore because beta app, so…
Yes, I was nosing around the Kaleidescope website and stumbled across that. Those systems will set you back 10s of thousands of dollars, so they’d better be of the highest quality.
Streaming is a pretty low bar, plus most studios weren’t even doing real 4K transfers for years ;-)
And 4k streams really aren’t.
How so?
It came up in a previous discussion on here but the actual “4k” streaming bitrates are well below that of a 4k disc (they’re more like a Blu-ray) but they can get away the name by using a UHD source file.
I’ll have to dig into that dci standards site, but ultimately I figure as long as they are doing cinema releases someones making a 4K file. And since were talking about the 1% here… someone is making the gear the theaters use, so folks can just buy that and skip the “full time concierge” or whatever is putting these folks out of business one after the other.
If they are working in digital there will likely be a UHD quality master (depending on how it’s filmed) but the resolution of a scan isn’t everything that makes a 4k release - that includes special audio and premium HDR and, I believe, it’s the latter which can be especially time-consuming.
And since were talking about the 1% here… someone is making the gear the theaters use, so folks can just buy that and skip the “full time concierge” or whatever is putting these folks out of business one after the other.
That was my thinking, if they’ve spent six figures on a home cinema system they could just get themselves signed up as a small, albeit private, cinema and get the film sent to them that way. It may be these fancy services also make this available on billionaires’ yachts and planes, I suppose, so perhaps they are paying the big bucks for convenience. If a member of staff has to tell a billionaire “sorry you can’t have that right now” they are either getting the sack or being asked if throwing a zero on the end will grease the wheels.
It may simply be that these companies that provide this service are being circumvented by the 1% knowing a guy who knows a guy at the studios and there are ways. Back in the day, they might just have paid for an extra print to be made of the film.
I’ve really been wanting to check out one of those boutique Bluerays, I just haven’t had a chance. I was always an impulse buyer and and ended up grabbing the shittiest DVDs somehow… best thing I got was that monster prosthetic test from Boogie Nights which was delightfully subversive in execution, but not the cinephile content I was promised :-S
I’ve really been wanting to check out one of those boutique Bluerays, I just haven’t had a chance
There’s probably a releaser for every taste but folks like Arrow and Vinegar Syndrome focus on the quality of their products with a few extras to make them special but rarely fill them with tat.
It’s often the big studios (that JW4 set is direct from Lionsgate) or the very small companies that try and polish a turd (the condom is from Visual Vengeance who focus on shot-on-video films that are never going to have the beat quality picture) or the reboxers (like Nova Media) who can throw in all sorts of things you wouldn’t buy separately.
If you are just interested in sampling the image quality then they usually have a standard release. Keep an eye out for sales.
best thing I got was that monster prosthetic test from Boogie Nights which was delightfully subversive in execution, but not the cinephile content I was promised
That’s definitely a thing that happened!
I need to invest a bit of energy and cash in it… I was planning on being a slightly different kind of hipster, but a good record player is way to expensive these days :-)
Some early experience with Hollywood left me with an axe to grind. Long story short; Fox expertly torpedoed the first and last movie I worked on… but I need to be supporting these efforts that treat the work with the respect it deserves. I don’t think most folks could even imagine how hard it is to make a movie. Even a crappy movie :-)
I need to invest a bit of energy and cash in it… I was planning on being a slightly different kind of hipster,
I’ve definitely gone for a more quality not quantity approach recently - I went through a stage when DVDs first appeared of trying to buy every zombie movie but the output kept ramping up and hit about 1 a day. So I threw in the hat.
but a good record player is way to expensive these days :-)
I’ve got an audiophile friend who has about half a dozen. That’s drunk eBaying for you.
Long story short; Fox expertly torpedoed the first and last movie I worked on…
Ouch. A friend was in negotiations to join the big push to get the special effects on Bargirl finished right at the moment they decided to write it all of against tax. He got a good story out it at least, although he was looking forward to the experience of working on a big superhero movie.
I need to be supporting these efforts that treat the work with the respect it deserves. I don’t think most folks could even imagine how hard it is to make a movie. Even a crappy movie :-)
And the great thing is there’s enough people out there interested in even a pretty poor shot-on-video film to justify a fancy release (unless folks like Visual Vengeance have messed up their business model). There are even releases of what could be called “outsider” films that is really just some guy beavering away with his friends knocking out films made round their neighbourhood.
This definitely feels like something that needs a higher profile.
I can’t believe it’s really going to be a future where you just can’t get one of these films in 4K… maybe not on physical media, but some flavor of that future was always coming.
It’s not going to surprise anyone right now that Sony and Disney are being dicks. That they can afford not to or lack any real commitment to the arts is also already internalized by most.
I’m glad you brought it to my attention, hopefully we’ll rope in a few more :-)
This is interesting and a lot of commentary says that the reason smaller films aren’t released physically is that there is too much work involved to do so at is mastering the movie for bluray would be impossible for a group of talented editors, color correctionists and sound engineers.
Personally, if anyone has any insight into the bluray mastering process I would love to learn more about it.
I mean if an outfit like Vinegar Syndrome can do multiple 4k restorations of crappy B movies every year, what’s stopping other production companies?
I don’t have any great insight into the process but the higher bar for releasing a 4k isn’t just getting a good enough master (which, if you made the film recently enough should be easy) its adding on all the bells and whistles, like fancy audio and premium HDR. That takes time and money. The boutique Blu-ray releasers presumably have all this pretty much streamlined, film studios, especially small ones, may not.
Also, the releasers often put out a fancy limited editions with all sorts of extras and I assume it’s these that help push them into profit, often in the preorder stage. Again, they’ll know all the right people to produce new art or bang out a booklet on the film or genre. So it’s easier for them to do.
Someone like Focus Features may be looking at The Holdovers and they’ve figured that any improvement in image or audio quality will only add marginally to viewing experience and that it isn’t worth the investment. I really liked the film and it was well worth seeing in the cinema but you are watching it for the quality of the performances and the skill of the writer and director, not for any visual spectacle.
Well if the quality doesn’t matter maybe we could at least get a VHS release. Or maybe laserdisc.
But seriously I do understand that angle. And I assume that there’s a certain threshold of sales that make it worth doing especially when a lot of stores are reducing or eliminating physical media sections (except records of course).
Speaking of records I think that that is where you could pivot the bluray industry. Make a bigger package with specially tinted discs and lots of behind the scenes photos or interviews on a fold out cover. Maybe even make people get up in the middle of the movie to flip the disc over? (Ok maybe not that last one.)
Speaking of records I think that that is where you could pivot the bluray industry. Make a bigger package with specially tinted discs and lots of behind the scenes photos or interviews on a fold out cover. Maybe even make people get up in the middle of the movie to flip the disc over? (Ok maybe not that last one.)
That’s what these boutique Blu-Ray houses do - you can get boxes, slipcovers, steelbooks, posters, lobby cards, pins, fabric badges, stickers, movie replicas and all sorts of other junk you wouldn’t give house-room to if bought separately. I have a zombie movie that includes a novelty condom - I suppose it might come in handy in an emergency but a novelty zombie condom may be a passion-killer.
The John Wick 4 Limited Collector’s Edition 4k includes:
- Specialty Marquis Pin
- 6 Double-Sided Art Cards
- Custom Map of Paris Poster
- Hotel Key Card & Themed Folder from the Osaka Continental Japan
Reviews suggest it’s a bit cheap looking and everything is low quality compared to the JW3 fancy release which is a thing of beauty.
Not quite on the same level but releasing films but with extra tat for a high price.
New 4k films are £25 on release but in the case of the upcoming Seven (or Se7en) they’re only two versions coming with extra stuff that don’t interest me. It’s a choice of either £45 or £80. I’m not interested in art cards, just the film.
I had seen the fancy Se7en releases promoted on Zavvi but hadn’t realised that was it (for now, they must be releasing a standard one at some point, right? Right?) and was impressed by the sheer amount of stuff they are lobbing at it 5o goose the price.
For anyone following along at home the largest one comes with your discs in a steelbook, inside a slipcover, inside a replica of the box which also contains, deep breath…:
- John Doe 38-Page Booklet
- Frosted Pine LITTLE TREES Brand Air Freshener
- 7x Deadly Sin Comic Books
- 7x Deadly Sin Crime Scene Art Cards
- Double-Sided A3 Poster
- “Help Me” Glow-in-the-Dark Art Card
- Investigation Chalkboard Art Card
I had pondered seeing if they’d get hefty reductions because no-one was buying them (the smaller release has a booklet and some art cards which isn’t too much as I am a sucker for a booklet) but, if these are currently the only releases on offer, they’ll sell out, so I may as well just ignore them.
I can probably see the argument for The Holdovers - it’s a film that doesn’t go for visual spectacle and it’s from a smaller studio who might not have the resources someone like Disney has.
Yar har fiddle dee dee, being a pirate is alright to me!
That’s all well and good but you can’t download a high quality movie if it was never released.
That’s probably the point of this. The most “in demand” movies won’t GET released to physical media in 4K, only 1080. The 4K and up versions will only be available to watch on the highest of top-tier streaming packages and it will almost certainly have hidden watermarks containing the streaming service and account that played it.
That’s probably the point of this.
I doubt they’ll turn down easy money to prevent piracy. It seems more likely a mix of this being down to small studios not being able to make 4k turn a profit and big studios wanting exclusive content to drive subscribers to their streaming channels.
Why do I have a wooden peg leg all of a sudden??
