Finally: The Fly (1986) and The Fly II (1989) Special Editions are coming in Fall of 2005! - Page 13

I'm very happy there's excitement for the release, but bear in mind (and I'm talking to you, Greg K.) that plans for this have been underway since 1999, when I first began producing DVD's. It was always at the top of my wish list and I pestered Fox about it for years before they decided to go ahead with it, which they only did when they were good and ready. Begging and hoping is all well and good, but for better or worse, studios operate on their own timetables.

I'm very happy there's excitement for the release, but bear in mind (and I'm talking to you, Greg K.) that plans for this have been underway since 1999, when I first began producing DVD's. It was always at the top of my wish list and I pestered Fox about it for years before they decided to go ahead with it, which they only did when they were good and ready. Begging and hoping is all well and good, but for better or worse, studios operate on their own timetables.
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Too true. But then, begging and pleading is always fun, right?

There have been rumors and stops/starts regarding the Se for a long time, as far as I can tell.

From what I understand, the double-feature disc that materialized in 2000 was originally going to be the SE, but for whatever reason, it didn't turn out that way. I spoke to Tim Lucas, and he said someone (You, Mr. Prior?)who was in charge of assembling the SE at that time called him to gather information/recollections of Lucas' time on the set. Lucas was surprised when the "SE" was released as a bare-bones Double Feature.

Thanks for seeing this maggot baby through its lengthy delivery, Mr. Prior!

People love to hear themselves say that....and I'll always be here to stand up and say, "The Long Kiss Goodnight is one of my very favorite action flicks."

By the way, I finally got to see The Curse of The Fly for the first time recently (via the Fox Movie channel--thanks to Jacob for the heads-up). It would be nice (for the sake of completeness) to see that film get a DVD release.

I'm very happy there's excitement for the release, but bear in mind (and I'm talking to you, Greg K.) that plans for this have been underway since 1999, when I first began producing DVD's. It was always at the top of my wish list and I pestered Fox about it for years before they decided to go ahead with it, which they only did when they were good and ready. Begging and hoping is all well and good, but for better or worse, studios operate on their own timetables.
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I find it all very interesting. One wonders how the rumored SE materialized into the Double Feature, and how the plans for the SE were resumed in recent times.

I even heard a rumor that back in the 80s, Cronenberg was asked if he wanted to do a Fly Special Edition (in the same vein as The Abyss Special Edition and other such late 1980s SEs) which would reinsert some of the deleted material, such as the monkey-cat, but he declined.

Perhaps Mr. Prior would be interesting in revealing some of the sordid details in how this whole thing went on behind the scenes once the SE is released. Then again...we might not want to know!

Still, the important thing is that it's on the way, and we can thank the efforts of David Prior and everyone else working on the SE for that!

I've been dying for this to come out for ages. I can't believe a special edition for 'The Fly' is finally being made.
I do need one thing clarified if possible: will the dvd contain the deleted scences within the movie itself or are the scenes soley restricted to the deleted scenes section?
Can anyone shed any light on this?
Thanks

The movie will be the original theatrical version (DC’s director’s cut)

The deleted footage will be showcased in two ways: within the feature-length documentary and in its own deleted scenes section.

Correct. Producer David Prior has confirmed many things about this release in the last 6 or so pages of this thread.

Here's a collection of DP's comments from this thread:
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So here's the latest. David's commentary has been done for a long time. As you'd expect from him, it's terrific. He felt he said everything he needed to say there, so he has (so far, I'm still bugging him) declined an on-camera interview. He's busy making new movies and prefers not to dwell overly on the past. Pretty understandable.

Reassembling the deleted reel from boxes of unmarked negative and without logs or notes has been, shall we say, challenging. The good news is Cronenberg has approved most of it. Not all of it, but the majority of it.

I've been pestering, needling and making a general nuissance of myself at Fox to let me produce this DVD since I started doing this job and now it's in the home stretch. More details will come when Fox is ready, but hopefully this will tide you over till then.

Cheers,

David


A very small but very vocal fan base. I know you'll like it.

A quick clarification, Scott: the DVD already has the green light -- it has for some time (seems like ages, actually). I know Fox wanted it finished a long time ago, but they deserve a lot of credit for not rushing it and letting me take the extra time.

Cheers,

David


I was fortunate enough to see one of the only rough cut screenings of The Fly in early '86 by essentially lying my way onto the Fox lot. The movie absolutely knocked me flat, but like most truly great works of art, it's only gotten better with age. One of the great perks of this job is the pinch-me-I'm-dreaming aspect of working with a film you've been in love with since the age of 17.

Cheers,

David


The L.A. screening included the butterfly baby, and it really didn't work. Some people laughed at the effect because it was so tonally different than what had come before, but I think the reason nobody liked it, certainly the reason I didn't like it, was nobody wanted to see Roni end up with Stathis.

The monkey-cat was not included, as it had already been cut after the Toronto screening.

Cheers,

David

Quick clarification regarding the transfer:

As I suspected, neither Cronenberg nor Mark Irwin had seen the new HD transfer Fox had done for the previous DVD release. Cronenberg's completely justified objections to the transfer were aimed at the earlier VHS releases. Screenings were set up for both of them and they both approved the current transfer with no changes, so that's what will be on our Special Edition.

Cheers,

David

P.S.
And Scott? Your description of seeing The Fly the first time and the effect it had on you was right on the money for me, too. One of my favorite things about Cronenberg is that he's absolutely an intellectual (despite his occasional middle-class protestations to the contrary), and yet he refuses to talk down to genre, or treat it as anything but serious and respectable.


All that existed of reel 8B (the monkey-cat sequence) was a dirty dupe of the cut workpicture, presumably created for the screening. As a dupe, there were no edge numbers and the cut workpicture is lost. The image was pretty ugly so we've gone back into the boxes of o-neg and telecined the takes that were used (which we had to figure out by seeing which takes were missing from the dialies rolls) and conformed it to the dupe by eye. I'm actually still doing that now and believe me, it's worse than it sounds.

The other problem was the audio. The dupe reel had a mixed mono track that included very crude sound effects and temp music that a) would be too costly to clear for release and b) frankly didn't work very well and didn't fit the tone of the film. I re-scored it with Howard Shore's music (which Cronenberg thought worked very well, by the way), but then that also meant re-building the entire soundtrack from scratch. I had Fox send me a DME so I could isolate things like the telepod sounds and computer display noises, and the rest is just a lot of laborious sound editing.

It's an enormous amount of work, but in the end it will look and sound better than it ever did. The monkey-cat lives.

Cheers,

David Prior


I'm not sure if the temp music was given to Shore as he worked, but it was certainly screened that way. When I saw the L.A. temp screening it was loaded with temp music, as one would expect.

The Monkey-Cat had two temp cues. The first, running from the start of the scene through killing the monkey-cat sounds a lot like The Brood, though I'm not 100% positive about that (yet). The remainder of the sequence is "The Droid" from Alien. As for re-scoring it, from a purist's perspective Greg, I take your point, but the truth is the scene really needs music to work. I take film music extremely seriously and have put a lot of care into building a track from Shore's other Fly music that has the tone and emotion I thought it needed and reflects the choices I think Howard Shore might have made. It's always a delicate thing playing with other people's work like this, and I certainly don't enter into it lightly, but the fact that Cronenberg made a point of singling out how much he liked the re-scoring, and that it made an impact on his decision to allow me to put the scene on the disc at all, I think means I was on the right track.

As for the sound effects, many of the hard effects were missing or clearly temp, such as footsteps, the beating with the pipe sounds, etc. And the sound effects we all associate with The Fly, from the sounds the computer type makes as it wipes onto the screen, to the little crinkly sounds that Brundlefy's skin makes when he moves, were entirely absent from the temp reel. Those have all been added in.

As far as finishing the teleportation visual effects, I think we'll probably not do that as I don't think it's necessary, and we're not trying to create a "finished" scene that can be edited back into the film. Cronenberg would definately not approve of that.

As some of you may know, Cronenberg was never happy with the leg-amputation scene and he doesn't want it included. I asked him if I could show bits and pieces of it in the context of a documentary while interview subjects refer to it and he was open to that, so we'll see.

Cheers,

David Prior


Anyone notice The Fly made it onto Time magazine's All Time 100 movies list?

Just spoke with Cronenberg and he loved the doc I made, Fear of the Flesh (clocking in at about 2 and a half hours now), and reversed his position on the leg-amputation part of the monkey-cat sequence, so the deleted reel 8B will be presented in it's entirety. He even said that he's started reevaluating his position on deleted material in general. I don't know how much The Fly can take credit for that, but I like to think it had something to do with it.

Obediently yours,

David Prior

The Fly will be two DVD 9's. With close to four hours of supplemental material (not including commentary), there's no other way to do it. I'm not sure who this tipster was, but it was never going to be a single disc.

As to reel 8B, Cronenberg had problems with the leg amputation beyond just the lighting; he was never satisifed with the sequence as a whole. That said, it's misleading to think of them as different sequences -- it's one long scene that begins with the monkey cat and ends on the awning, and the rough cut screening in Toronto included the whole thing.

As far as other deleted scenes go, you will see more than you probably expected, most of them transferred from the original negative. From whole scenes, like Roni's interview of Brundle after the first teleporting, to excised bits of dialogue (poetry of the steak, etc.), even the bag lady murder in script form (it was never shot). Some are set apart in the Deleted Scenes section, the majority of them are contained within the documentary. And yes, there's quite a bit of foot sucking.

Based on what he said, I think the thing that changed Cronenberg's mind about the deleted material was the intense level of detail in the documentary. I edited the thing as I hoped it would live, knowing he might want me to cut huge chunks out. Thankfully, however, he appreciated the approach. He said it was like "re-living the whole experience, but in the best possible way." That was an amazingly gratifying thing to hear.

As always, obediently yours,

David Prior


Yes, there will be commentary by David Cronenberg. I tried to get Howard Shore to do one as well, but I couldn't schedule any time with him. Busy guy, as you can imagine.

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Hope that helps.

To sum things up:


1. It's a 2-disc set.

2. The transfer is the same one that was on the 2000 Fly/Fly II Double Feature disc, and it's the same (theatrical) cut of the film.

3. There will be audio commentary from David Cronenberg.

4. There will be a documentary about the making of the film, "Fear of the Flesh", that runs about 2 1/2 hours, and bits and pieces of deleted scenes/moments will be incorporated into it.

5. There will also be an actual Deleted Scenes section.

6. Confirmed deleted scenes: the monkey-cat/insect leg amputation (restored from the original negative with newly-added sound effects/music from the completed film laid in), Brundle's post-teleportation interview, the script for the unfilmed baglady murder scene, and more.


Sounds great so far.

Cheers to David Prior, who had been very kind in giving us little nuggets of info on the progress of the SE. That's been a very nice thing for him to do, when he had no obligation to! Thanks for caring, DP!

I CAN'T WAIT!

I am absolutely surprised about the Fly II being so loaded indeed

great news

Looking at the above list for The FLy SE, all I can say is wow!! My hat is off too you David, this looks like the SE of the year!


Who did the Fly 2 SE? I'll probably grab this for completness sake.

I knew I was getting The Fly and now looking at all these features I'll be getting The Fly II too!

Wow, a Fly II special edition. I guess I'll have to pick that one up too. I just hope Fox uses keepcases and not those flimsy cardboard ones(like the Predator SE came in).

Amazing stuff, dare I say the Fly SE sounds comprable to something Criterion would put out.

That would be me. I can't really talk too much about the disc (some of us take those pesky NDA's seriously...) but I will say it was a lot of fun to work with Chris Walas on the project. It's a totally different animal than Cronenberg's picture and it was about time to shine a little light on it. I hope you enjoy it.

For those who are interested, this is my first solo project. My regular gig is working with somebody you may be familiar with - Charles de Lauzirika.

Nice work fellas. Thanks to Greg and Jacob, whose tenacity -- while bordering on the obsessive (meant in the best possible sense!) -- has helped provide me with by far my most anticipated title of the year-- and of one of my favorite films of all time. And, of course, thanks in advance to David Prior (and Paul Prischman). Can't wait for these.

I've always enjoyed The Fly 2. I think it's more of a traditional sci-fi horror flick than Cronenberg's film is, but I've always liked the sequel's aggressive nastiness. It's a pretty mean-spirited little movie.

Looking forward to getting both of these SEs.

Hi Paul

Welcome to the HTF.

I was not going to pick up Fly II but those specs changed that decision

Cheers

Oscar

Dang you Paul!
I wanted to pass on Fly II, but after reading the specs, I also have changed my mind and will pick it up.

I was going to just get the Fly SE as well, but since Fly 2 is also going to be a SE - I'll get that too.

I really like the trailer to Fly 2 as well.
'Its getting closer! Much Closer!! Don't be afraid... Be VERY VERY AFRAID!!'

And Daphne Zuniga's very easy on the eyes too

Add me to the list of people who where going to pass on Fly2, but wel now pick it up. Welcome to forum Paul, I'm looking forward to seeing your solo debut!

......!!!!!

I would have posted the news yesterday, but my local library was closing, and I had to get home. Thanks to Jacob for peforming that task.

Wow. I can't wait for the *official* announcement!

Now, we've discussed the possibility of a Fly II SE in the past, and I'm both shocked and pleased that one is coming also. It makes sense, really, from a marketing perspective.

Although, Fly II is much-maligned (especially compared to the first film), and gets consistent one (* of ****) star ratings in all the tv and movie guides.

I think the problem there is that the studio wanted certain things in the sequel, and there were too many writers working on the script. Still, I think Chris Walas did a very commendable job pulling it together (especially since it was his very first feature). And the effects are really nifty. The Fly II is the sort of "bad" genre movie that's really grown on me. I've always hoped at least a cheapie SE with Walas commentary would be produced.

Wow.

Okay, let's break this down a bit:

"Fox will very soon announce a pair of long-awaited DVD releases - The Fly: Special Edition (1986) and The Fly II: Special Edition (1989) - each a 2-disc set expected to street on 9/27 (SRP $25.98 each)."

"The Fly: Special Edition will feature the film in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen video with both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 audio."

Yep. This will be the same transfer as the 2000 disc. And I know some fans were hoping for a DTS track, so that's great!

"Extras will include audio commentary by director David Cronenberg"

Yep. We knew about that.

"the Fear of the Flesh: The Making of The Fly documentary (broken into Fear of the Flesh: Larva, Fear of the Flesh: Pupa and Fear of the Flesh: Metamorphosis featurettes)"

This will clock in at about 2 1/2 hours, and will feature interviews and deleted scenes/trims. Sweeeeet.

"4 deleted/alternate scenes (Second Interview, Monkey-Cat, Brundlefly vs. Bag Lady and Butterfly Baby/Alternate ending)"

Awesome! I wasn't sure the epilogue would be included. And we now know the monkey-cat scene will be complete, including the insect leg amputation. Also, the "Brundlefly vs. Bag Lady" scene will be in script form, as Mr. Prior previously said, since it was never filmed.

"test footage videos (Main Title Elements, Telepod Tests, Make-Up Tests, The Exploding Head and Cronenfly)"

I'll bet "Main Title Elements" will include those flashes of green light that appear in the theatrical trailer. "The Exploding Head" no doubt refers to Brundlefly's death by shotgun, and "Cronenfly" most likely refers to a test of the "Fly Wheel" (the rotating set, used for wall-crawling scenes), in which Cronenberg wore some wings and antennae and improvised a monologue about a failed relationship with a praying mantis (as noted in Cinefex # 28).

"15 featurette clips available via an optional branching mode while watching the film (including A Radical Departure, The Rise of Marketing, Who Wants to Die?, All You Have to Do is Be Passionate, Cronenberg's Preparation, On Cronenberg's Films, Cronenberg as Gynecologist, Cronenberg as Director, On the Cannes Jury, The Mother of Invention, It Takes Time to Spread the Goop, Glass-Break Test, Scotch & Razor Blades, Genes in the Ether, Winning the Oscar, The Last Collaboration, Haunted by the Fly and The Brundle Museum of Natural History)"

These probably consist of interview clips and such not used in the main Fear of the Flesh documentary.

"a number of interactive written texts (including George Langelaan's original short story, Charles Edward Pogue's original screenplay, David Cronenberg's rewrite, the Cinefex article The Fly Papers and the American Cinematographer articles New Buzz on an Old Theme and More About The Fly)"

Awesome. I just hope these aren't DVD-ROM extras (I don't have one.). I'd like to be able to read the ones I've never seen.

"a gallery of poster and lobby cart art, a gallery of production photos and concept art, 9 trailers and TV spots, the David Cronenberg Profile featurette, 2 Easter eggs (Halloweener and Vomit Drop) and a look at genre films from the Summer of 1986 (including Big Trouble in Little China and Aliens, as well as The Fly)."

I wonder if the trailers/tv spots are *all* from The Fly. Hmm.


"The Fly II: Special Edition will also feature the film in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen video with both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 audio, along with audio commentary by director Chris Walas and film historian/archivist Bob Burns"

Cool. Bob Burns is a friend of Walas' and he has archived some of the artifacts from both Fly films. And Walas has always had interesting stuff to say in interviews and such, so this should be a treat.

"a deleted scene (Stopping for Food) and an alternate ending (Houseboat Scene)"

Great! I've always wanted to see this scene. Martin pukes on the window of a car to shut up some kids heckling him, melting a hole in it.

And I never knew there was an alternate ending on the houseboat! I'd seen a still photo of Beth and Martin on the houseboat at sunset, but I thought it came from earlier in the film, perhaps during the "Lock, Stock, and Teardrops" montage. Nifty!

"2 documentaries (including The Fly Papers: The Buzz on Hollywood's Scariest Insect and Transformations: Looking Back at The Fly II)"

Awesome! I was hoping The Fly Papers would make it onto The Fly SE disc, but this is the next best thing!

And I hope the "Transformations" doc isn't just a fluffy, 10-min. retrospective piece. Maybe we'll get some interviews with Eric Stoltz and the rest of the gang,and juicy behind-the-scenes material.

"the CWI Video Production Journal featurette, the Composer's Master Class: Christopher Young featurette, the original theatrical EPK featurette, storyboard-to-film comparisons of 3 scenes (with optional commentary by director Chris Walas), a production photo gallery, The Art of The Fly II gallery, a storyboard gallery, 2 trailers for The Fly II and trailers for The Fly (1989), The Fly (1958), Return of the Fly (1958), Alien and The Omen."

Cool. It says 2 Fly II trailers. One must be the theatrical trailer (seen on the 2000 disc), the other might be the "heart monitor" teaser (partially seen in The Fly Papers).


Wow.

And thanks to Paul Prishman for chiming in here!

"That would be me. I can't really talk too much about the disc (some of us take those pesky NDA's seriously...) but I will say it was a lot of fun to work with Chris Walas on the project. It's a totally different animal than Cronenberg's picture and it was about time to shine a little light on it. I hope you enjoy it.

For those who are interested, this is my first solo project. My regular gig is working with somebody you may be familiar with - Charles de Lauzirika."


Was there some back-and-forth between you and Mr. Prior on these Fly SEs, Mr. Prishman? After all, many of the same people worked on both films.

And it would be nice if both SEs had a somewhat unified look in terms of packaging, menus, etc.


Anyway, you should have seen my jaw gape when I checked out The Digital Bits yesterday. This is more than any of us could have ever hoped for, I think.

Wow!!!!


And by the by, Jacob, maybe we should try and change the title of this thread. Perhaps: "Finally: The Fly (1986) and The Fly II (1989) Special Editions are coming in Fall of 2005!" or something.

Yeah, the title of the thread is a little outdated.