"High And The Mighty", "Island In The Sky", Hondo & McLintock on DVD (1 Viewer)

I found this information while doing a search on these movies from John Wayne. I was wondering if anyone else has heard of any release in the works to our beloved format.

http://www.jwaynefan.com/hymytyvariety.html

Last thing I read, was that the Wayne Estate and Paramount came to an agreement about these titles.






Crawdaddy

I sure hope we will see these released in the near future.

I sent an email to the www.jwaynefan.com web site asking about The High and The Mighty and below is Paul Newton's answer. It looks like it should be soon!



Roland,


The news about THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY DVD release is getting better, I hope. Here is a recap of the information I have.


In December 2003 there was an article in Daily Variety announcing that Gretchen Wayne, Michael's widow, had made a deal to update and restore THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY and ISLAND IN THE SKY. CLICK HERE to read a reprint the Variety article.


In the 02/20/04 issue of the San Francisco Examiner, Jan Wahl quoted William Wellman Jr. in her column as saying "Of my father's 76 pictures, one of the best is finally being restored. I just finished working on the DVD of "The High and the Mighty," so look for that one soon!"


On Friday, July 16th I called Batjac Productions (310-278-9870) and they confirmed that it will be released but that was all that they would say, even after I pressed them to find out if it would be this year. Well, it is still not for sure when it will be out but from another source I hear that we can expect it this year.


Austin Rockwell Taylor (aka ART) the moderator and sheriff of McCandles, Texas the most popular John Wayne group message board on Yahoo!, has great news. From a reliable source deep within Batjac, the plan was to have had it released by July 3, 2004 to coincide with the date of its original release in 1954. But the re-mastering/restoration has not been completed. There are still plans to release the film this year to take advantage of the 50th anniversary marketing plan. But as of now they have not set a target date. By the way, this release is going to be a 2-disc set, there should be some swell extra goodies on this release. If all goes well it will be a very merry Christmas for us all with this long overdue release.


If and when I hear anything further, I will send out that info to the mailing list and post it on the website. So stay tuned for breaking news.





Paul Newton ---------------------------------------------
John Wayne lives at www.jwaynefan.com --- [email protected]

Could this mean in the future we will finally get an estate-approved 16x9 widescreen disc of McCLINTOCK as well? It burns me that this is only available pan-scan and in multiple shoddy PD presentations.

Any word on ISLAND IN THE SKY and the other Batjac productions?

Island in the Sky has also been restored. They still have the stereo for High and the Mighty, but the stereo tracks for Island in the Sky are long lost, so it will be mono.

There's another John Wayne film that hasn't made it to DVD as yet. It is "The Shepherd of the Hills". I would definitely buy that one, as well as the two mentioned above.

What about Hondo?

In field sequential 3-D! Yeh, that will never happen.

Where is "McClintock" in its proper 2.35:1

This is absolutely fantastic news to learn that THATM will be a 2 disc se

Post Edited By Administrator - Please don't post copyrighted articles in their entirety. Thank you.

from videobusiness.com 9/8/04

JOHN WAYNE LIVES
Paramount gets additional titles
By Scott Hettrick 9/8/2004

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SEPT. 8 | John Wayne's The High and the Mighty will finally make its home video debut via a new distribution deal between Paramount Home Entertainment and Batjac Prods.

The 1954 multi-Oscar nominee is one of four Wayne classics for which Paramount's video and TV units have acquired rights for distribution beginning in May. The others are McLintock!, Hondo and Island in the Sky.

Indie video distributor MPI had VHS rights to McLintock! and Hondo, but those licenses expired prior to any DVD releases.

Michael Wayne's widow and Batjac president Gretchen Wayne is responsible for the overall deal with Paramount and the first output agreement for the oft-requested High and the Mighty, which she says was played only once before on TV in 1980 as the result of a special favor by Michael Wayne for a friend.

She said the negative for the movie, which was one of the original widescreen Cinemascope productions, was severely damaged by rain. But the film, co-starring Robert Stack about a washed-up pilot who must guide a damaged airliner to safety, has been restored and will be presented in stereo 5.1 sound.

All the movies will include a bevy of bonus features pulled from the Batjac archives and new interviews and audio commentaries with surviving cast and crew.

The 1953 Island in the Sky, in which Wayne also plays a pilot, was never released for TV or video either.

The deal with Paramount's worldwide VP Tom Lesinski and worldwide TV distribution president Joel Berman also includes the distribution of five Batjac-produced movies, in which Wayne did not appear, for basic cable, international markets and DVD: Man In the Vault (1956), Plunder of the Sun (1953), Ring of Fear (1954), Seven Men From Now (1956) and Track of the Cat (1954).

About darn time!!! I'm sure Paramount will do the films justice. I hope the home video rights to the Republic titles revert to Paramount sooner rather than later as well.

Regards,

It was scooped here on HTF three months ago. Old news!


http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=201183

Great news and I can't wait to see High and the Mighty again. For those who have access to Video Business, the following is the link to the entire article.

http://www.videobusiness.com/article...8&catType=NEWS