The Black Cauldron special edition?

[Flanger-Hanger]

They did it for Pinocchio, that older restoration was never seen in the US, if I remember correctly.
And by the way, was The Black Cauldron restored by Lowry? Do we know for sure, I mean?
Even for a Blu-ray release, it probably has to be re-done again. I doubt it if it was done in HD. And since this was shot in 70mm, I expect a great looking film, not the crappy letterbox version we have now.

Well...wikerpedia says tit was done by Lowry...

I doubt we'd see an anamorphic version of the existing region 1 transfer, you can even see in the new trailer that it uses pan and scanned clips from the France DVD which looks alot better than our Gold Collection edition.

Though a thorough job on the 70mm print would be desirable, Disney may just tweak the existing one to save time if they feel the effort is not worth it for a lesser title to do it from scratch again. Annoying for us fans for sure but desirable for Disney and at least they have something to work from instead of say Oliver and Company.

Re-watching said trailer (in high quality on an HD monitor), ya, it looks far better than the current DVD and could work for sure.

[Dr.Mirakle32]

I've NEVER seen this film, but really want to. Hopefully it will come out on bluray soon, so I can change that.

[KubrickFan]

They did it for Pinocchio, that older restoration was never seen in the US, if I remember correctly.
And by the way, was The Black Cauldron restored by Lowry? Do we know for sure, I mean?
Even for a Blu-ray release, it probably has to be re-done again. I doubt it if it was done in HD. And since this was shot in 70mm, I expect a great looking film, not the crappy letterbox version we have now.

Well...wikerpedia says tit was done by Lowry...

I doubt we'd see an anamorphic version of the existing region 1 transfer, you can even see in the new trailer that it uses pan and scanned clips from the France DVD which looks alot better than our Gold Collection edition.

Though a thorough job on the 70mm print would be desirable, Disney may just tweak the existing one to save time if they feel the effort is not worth it for a lesser title to do it from scratch again. Annoying for us fans for sure but desirable for Disney and at least they have something to work from instead of say Oliver and Company.

Re-watching said trailer (in high quality on an HD monitor), ya, it looks far better than the current DVD and could work for sure.

Yeah, I think that was just put on Wikipedia by some guy who found out the 'Platinum' restorations were done by Lowry and assumed this must be done by them too. I don't even know if it needs a restoration. The film is 24 years old, so it would be in good condition if it was stored properly. And if I know Disney, that would be the case.
Of course an 8K scan of the 70mm film would be the best option, but I really doubt that Disney would spend the money to do that.

[singerguy04]

I don't even know if it needs a restoration. The film is 24 years old, so it would be in good condition if it was stored properly. And if I know Disney, that would be the case.

Have you actually seen the Gold Collection DVD of The Black Cauldron, or basically any other DVD of a film from that relative time period? Of course it would need a restoration, they all look horrible.

[Flanger-Hanger]

Lowry Digital's website said they did Black Cauldron:

http://www.lowrydigital.com/filmography.html

Whether or not it was done in 1080p is debatable but since Warner at least has been doing that since 2001 it's possible to assume it was done to that degree, if not by today's standards.

[Neal]

Honestly, no offense to those who like this film, but I just don't think it's good enough to merit me double-dipping. Perhaps I'll re-watch it in the future and change my mind, but, I knew what it was going in (not a musical, dark, serious fantasy) - and even though I enjoy that genre, this just didn't do much for me.

[KubrickFan]

Have you actually seen the Gold Collection DVD of The Black Cauldron, or basically any other DVD of a film from that relative time period? Of course it would need a restoration, they all look horrible.

Scanning in a film and doing some basic clean up work isn't a restoration. The studios know that films that aren't properly stored tend to rot away (happened to a lot of films from the 30's, 40's and even 50's). Since The Black Cauldron is from the 80's, it's relatively new and does not need a proper restoration like the Disney films from the 30's and 40's and 50's got.
Unless, that is, if the 70mm version is in a bad condition.

[singerguy04]

Have you actually seen the Gold Collection DVD of The Black Cauldron, or basically any other DVD of a film from that relative time period? Of course it would need a restoration, they all look horrible.

Scanning in a film and doing some basic clean up work isn't a restoration. The studios know that films that aren't properly stored tend to rot away (happened to a lot of films from the 30's, 40's and even 50's). Since The Black Cauldron is from the 80's, it's relatively new and does not need a proper restoration like the Disney films from the 30's and 40's and 50's got.
Unless, that is, if the 70mm version is in a bad condition.

Ah, i see what you mean. For a moment I thought you were saying that they were just fine the way they were, lol. They probably don't need much more than a proper cleaning, but in my opinion TBC along with Fox and the Hound and The Great Mouse Detective could use some touching up. There are parts of these films that seem either too light or even fuzzy. Either way, none of them would really need a full out restoration.

[goofystitch]

singerguy04 wrote:

They probably don't need much more than a proper cleaning, but in my opinion TBC along with Fox and the Hound and The Great Mouse Detective could use some touching up. There are parts of these films that seem either too light or even fuzzy.

I would throw Oliver & Company into that list as well, although I've often wondered if the fuzzy and light scenes are more a product of the times in which the films were made? When I look at other studio's animated films from the 80's, I see the same thing. I was born in 85, so its hard for me to fully remember, but An American Tale and The Land Before Time always seemed to have fuzzy scenes or scenes that seemed too light. So maybe these are things that shouldn't be fixed with a restoration? I don't know. The only scene in The Little Mermaid that is like this to me is the beginning, but I think it was meant to be that way to simulate fog.

[singerguy04]

hmmm, i just realized that all of those fiims utilize fog a lot... maybe that would account for the fuzzy. Although I see it at times I know there is no fog. I think a lot of it is due to Disney not cleaning the frames properly. Disney doesn't really put the right kind of budget behind the releases of these 80's films. On the flip side to that point these films aren't so much about the animation IMO as much as they are about their stories. That also seems to have been a trend in the 80's.

[Poody]

So is that actual a release date yet? I went ahead and sold my old edition....

[Neal]

No, we continue to wait in silence.

[goofystitch]

I went to my first Disneyana convention this week, NFFC, in Anaheim, CA and one of the guest speakers was a man named Les Perkins, who owns his own production studio that specializes in DVD bonus features. He is a big Disney fan and has been lucky enough to work on many of the great Disney DVD releases, including Mary Poppins. He talked about upcoming projects he worked on and one of them was The Black Cauldron. The deleted scene is an alternate version of the scenes with the fairies. They found pencil animation spanning 3 years and recreated the audio, even using original orchestration, to present it. Les showed us about a minute of the scene to wet our appetite and it was great! On his DVD, the runtime was around 9 minutes long, but he said that sometimes they are shorter when Disney actually releases them because they edit them down, so it could be shorter when it comes out.

Someone asked him during the Q&A when this was coming out and he said that Disney hasn't issued a date yet, but that he expects it's release to be about 6 months away, which would make sense since Disney likes to put out a rerelease in the beginning of every year and that would be the year of the 25th anniversary.

[Flanger-Hanger]

Thanks for the news! Did he say anything about other bonus features?

[goofystitch]

Not specifically about The Black Cauldron. He mentioned that he worked on "something" for Bedknobs and Broomsticks and that he most recently did a feature for an upcoming release of Dumbo, so everyone should expect a replacement for the Big Top Edition within a year or so, provided Disney doesn't push it back.

He did give us some sad news and that is the fact that every studio in Hollywood, including Disney, has practically stopped making new bonus features for movies. Disney is still doing some, but it is significantly scaled back. Personally, I wonder if this isn't more a result of the fact that Disney has already given deluxe home video treatments to their most iconic films and don't see much reason behind spending money on other releases?

[SpringHeelJack]

Personally, I wonder if this isn't more a result of the fact that Disney has already given deluxe home video treatments to their most iconic films and don't see much reason behind spending money on other releases?

One can hope. Or else it's just that it can sell on name alone and people will buy it regardless. Or if you're Reyquila, you buy it because only a hater would not cram more money into Mickey's cash-filled gullet.

Still, good to know "The Black Cauldron" apparently hasn't been cancelled.

[Brer Brandon]

He mentioned that he worked on "something" for Bedknobs and Broomsticks and that he most recently did a feature for an upcoming release of Dumbo, so everyone should expect a replacement for the Big Top Edition within a year or so, provided Disney doesn't push it back.

I'm glad to hear this. I wanted to buy Dumbo this week and Amazon said it had been discontinued. I hadn't heard anything about that or a new release coming down the hatch, but I assumed they must have something planned. I just hadn't been able to find anything about it yet. I hope they hurry because I've really been wanting to watch Dumbo. It's one of the last remaining titles I've never upgraded to DVD (I had all of the animated features on VHS and over the last ten years have been slowly upgrading just takes a while when you've spent those years as a poor HS/college/grad student).

The Black Cauldron is another one I need on DVD but I have been waiting on this special edition. It needs to hurry!

[goofystitch]

I was excited about the Dumbo news as well. As far as single disc Disney releases go, Dumbo already has a great one, but I personally feel it deserves more. I would expect a future Dumbo release to recycle the previous bonus features as well, which is good because most of them are worth revisiting (except for the fluff like the games).

[DisneyJedi]

So we're only getting one deleted scene, aren't we? Because I don't think that's really fair if we are, after the trailer said deleted scenes, meaning more than one. Otherwise, that would be classified as false advertising. Right?

I really REALLY don't want to end up getting screwed over.

[ajmrowland]

^He only pointed out one scene in particular. Most scenes in animation that are deleted are done so in the storyboard phase, and it wouldn't be hard to edit those together.

Anyway, they're saying that they're only scaling back features now?