Is there a reason no (or very few?) David Fincher films are on 4K disc? (1 Viewer)

[Carlo_M]

I admit I am not plugged into the Hollywood news so I don't know if maybe Fincher is on the outs, but with the release of The Godfather films on 4K, along with the recently released The Shawshank Redemption, I realized that now most of my favorite films are available on 4K UHD disc. Most of Christopher Nolan's flims (one of my favorite contemporary directors) are on 4K (save The Following and Memento, which I hope will get their release soon). And many Hitchcock films have (or will soon have) 4K UHD releases.

One glaring hole I just realized are Fincher's films. The Game. Fight Club. Benjamin Button. Social Network. Gone Girl. His take on Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Heck, I'm even one of the seemingly few fans of Panic Room.

If it's just studio reticence, perhaps they feel they won't earn back the money put into the releases (which would be an odd calculus given many already-released 4K discs didn't make as much money as Fincher's biggest titles on disc would) then I'll just leave it at that and hope that the studios at some point realize there are a dedicated group of Fincher fans who would purchase his movies on disc. I'm hoping he hasn't done anything to fall from the public's good graces that I haven't heard of...I don't think he's done anything Weinstein-y but as I said I also don't stay plugged in to the Hollywood inside scene.

Any ideas why there is seemingly such a glaring omission of Fincher on 4K?

 

[Worth]

I suspect it's the same reason why so many James Cameron films are MIA - he's a control freak who's more interested in what he's currently working on than what he's previously done. He also likely has the right to approve any transfer/master, so the studios can't release anything without his say so.

 

[Kyle_D]

Social Network is on UHD. It was part of the Columbia Classics Volume 2 set.

 

[Jeffrey D]

Social Network is on UHD. It was part of the Columbia Classics Volume 2 set.

I think that’s the only Fincher that is in UHD. Panic Room hasn’t even been released on BluRay in the USA (I’d buy that one in a heartbeat).

 

[Kyle_D]

I also think Gone Girl is available in 4K via streaming. It's a Fox title, and I believe the rights were acquired by Disney in the merger. I don't hold out much hope that Disney will give it a disc release given their focus on streaming. Same with Fight Club, although that may have a better chance of getting a disc release because it has sold well historically. Alien 3 may get released if Disney ever puts together an Alien franchise box set, perhaps as a tie-in with the upcoming FX series.

There are rumors that Sony will release Panic Room on UHD later this year. I suspect they'll also eventually release Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It was rumored to be in the works a few years ago, but the release was apparently postponed indefinitely.

Se7en would look fantastic in 4K, but it will likely need a new scan and HDR grade. Fincher likely has approval rights, and I suspect the studio may want to wait for the Kevin Spacey radioactivity to die down a bit further, so I'm not holding my breath for a release any time soon. Maybe we'll see something for the 30th anniversary in 2025.

Zodiac and Curious Case of Benjamin Button were shot with early digital cameras and only have HD masters. There may be a benefit to bumping the color up to 10-bit and giving them an HDR grade, but IMO, the Blu-rays are adequate for these titles.

I wouldn't be surprised if Criterion releases Mank later this year given their pattern of releasing prestige, auteur-directed Netflix titles (Roma, The Irishman, Marriage Story, etc.).

 

[Dick]

But isn't it only relatively recently that 4K consumer acceptence has really started picking up? And wouldn't that mean we would now be seeing a much larger release schedule from the studios for that format? And wouldn't that, in turn, mean that our chances of getting such releases as the Fincher films in 4K would be increasing exponentially? Jus' askin'. Already, about a third of Best Buy's video space is occupied by 4K, at least in my store, and that was a pretty quick transition.

 

[Carlo_M]

But isn't it only relatively recently that 4K consumer acceptence has really started picking up? And wouldn't that mean we would now be seeing a much larger release schedule from the studios for that format? And wouldn't that, in turn, mean that our chances of getting such releases as the Fincher films in 4K would be increasing exponentially? Jus' askin'. Already, about a third of Best Buy's video space is occupied by 4K, at least in my store, and that was a pretty quick transition.

As someone who loves and owns thousands of music and movies on physical media (vinyl, CD, SACD, DVD-A, DVD, BD and 4K) it saddens me to say consumer acceptance will never be what it was during the heyday of DVD, or even BD. There is simply too much high quality streaming options now that DVD and to some extent, the early days of BD never had to contend with. Every store is shrinking their physical media presence. My local Best Buys (I live in L.A. so I have like four within a 10 mile radius)...lets just say *I* have a better selection of 4K than they do, and it's not close.

Sure not every studio is going to release every movie on 4K. It wouldn't make financial sense. But the 4K home video market has been strong enough to see the entire Star Wars franchise released on it (not going to step into the OOT issue lol), the entire Godfather, Back to the Future, most of Spielberg's popular films, most of Nolan's films, etc. etc. And yet there is the curious exception of Fincher and, as Worth mentioned, Cameron.

We know Cameron's control freak tendencies. It's what has deprived us of The Abyss and True Lies on Blu-Ray, let alone 4K.

Good catch about Social Network being on the Classics v.2 set. It's a curious exception though because 1) it requires one to purchase all of the movies, and 2) unless it was different from v.1, were its contents not voted on by the fans? If so, that dispels the notion that 1) there isn't fan desire for it, as it got sufficient votes to make it into the set, and 2) that Fincher needs to be fully involved. Maybe Fincher does have Cameron level control of his property, I don't know. I do think there are only a small amount of directors who can hold their titles back from release (Lucas--maybe not so much after the Disney sale, Spielberg and Cameron) and I'm not 100% sure, as much as I love Fincher's work, that his cache in Hollywood allows him the same "yay/nay" the other three have.

 

[Carlo_M]

Zodiac and Curious Case of Benjamin Button were shot with early digital cameras and only have HD masters. There may be a benefit to bumping the color up to 10-bit and giving them an HDR grade, but IMO, the Blu-rays are adequate for these titles.

I will have to make time to go back and look, but I've started to really second-guess the notion that being shot on early digital equates to the BD being "good enough". That's not doubting that BD has sufficient resolution to cover early shot-on-HD-cam films, obviously the math checks out.

It is more that, since I got my OLED 4K, it has really shown the weaknesses of some older BD transfers. I just watched Kingdom of Heaven Director's Cut (first release) and I could see compression artifacts that I had never noticed before when watching it maybe 15 years ago (or whenever it was I first got that disc). That would have been played back on a rear projection 48" HDTV and likely powered by an Oppo 83 connected via component cable, I don't think I got my first HDMI TV until 2010 or later.

Other BD transfers have looked good on my current equipment, but there are clearly some out there that we thought were good back in the day, but newer equipment and playback devices are really starting to show some of the imperfections that were masked by previously lesser technology.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Panic Room has to be completely reassembled for a 4k transfer. The completed film only exists as a 2K DI and a dupe filmout of said DI.

 

[jayembee]

Good catch about Social Network being on the Classics v.2 set. It's a curious exception though because 1) it requires one to purchase all of the movies, and 2) unless it was different from v.1, were its contents not voted on by the fans? If so, that dispels the notion that 1) there isn't fan desire for it, as it got sufficient votes to make it into the set, and 2) that Fincher needs to be fully involved.

If I recall correctly, of the six titles in Box #1, four were decided upon by Sony, and two were chosen by popular vote. I believe that the latter two were A League of Their Own and Jerry Maguire. If the same was true (probably) of Box #2, I would guess that the two popular-vote titles were Stripes and either Sense & Sensibility or The Social Network.

 

[Bartman]

I know this is sacrilege but perhaps Fincher believes the Blu-rays look good enough (based on the reviews here) and he's concentrating on new projects?

 

[Kent K H]

I know this is sacrilege but perhaps Fincher believes the Blu-rays look good enough (based on the reviews here) and he's concentrating on new projects?

I'm guessing it's a mix of all of the above.

Fincher seems very interested in the look of his films, so it wouldn't surprise me if at least some of them were held back for his participation.

Some of the "lesser" titles may simply be due to studio disinterest or others could be lost in the Mouse House.

Some of them may be because they don't sell enough or wouldn't be worth the criticism from his vocal fanbase to upsample since they were shot digitally and would therefore not be as big an improvement from blu ray as his filmic projects.

He's had enough work of various popularity, studio backing, budget and capture method that they could all be true.

 

[Bobby Henderson]

Zodiac and Curious Case of Benjamin Button were shot with early digital cameras and only have HD masters. There may be a benefit to bumping the color up to 10-bit and giving them an HDR grade, but IMO, the Blu-rays are adequate for these titles.

Another thing to consider with Fincher's movies is all the digital-based visual effects.

Seven wasn't so heavy with those kinds of effects, although the movie was digitally re-graded way back in the late 1990's for the 2-disc Platinum Edition DVD. It's very likely a new 4K version would have to start from scratch with a new DI. The movie turns 30 years old (!!!) three years from now. Is there enough interest in that title for a big remaster?

I don't see any point in trying to make a UHD version of Fight Club. The movie was shot on film, but it had a lot of 90's era digital effects. Like The Matrix, it leaned heavy into photogrammetry use. That stuff was done at or even below 2K levels. I don't think it would look good merely up-rezzed to UHD. Even if one could find all the original source elements, data tapes, etc used to create the effects it might be extremely difficult or just impossible to do a new render. The hardware, software and operating systems used to create CG work in the 1990's are all pretty much dead now. Importing scenes, assets, meshes, etc from dead applications like Alias PowerAnimator or Softimage into a current application like Maya is probably going to be a very hit or miss affair. Some of the same problems exist for Fincher's other movies in the 2000's. Once he started shooting his movies using early D-Cinema camera systems that did even more to bake-in a 2K limit.

 

[Lord Dalek]

I'd say the films with a best chance of UHD are Se7en and The Game (and maaaaybe Alien3 since he wont be involved with that one anyway).

 

[TravisR]

I'd say the films with a best chance of UHD are Se7en and The Game (and maaaaybe Alien3 since he wont be involved with that one anyway).

I even think Alien 3 is a long shot since Fox doesn't seem to be digging into their catalog and they'd probably only release it as a part of an Alien box set.

I wouldn't count out The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the always rumored to be coming soon Panic Room either.

 

[JediFonger]

Gone Girl is 4k SDR on digital platforms.
Social Networks is 4k Dolby Vision part of Columbia Vol2 set.
i dont have netflix, but is Mank 4k+Dolby Vision on netflix? i'd like to imagine so... but i dunno.
The Killer coming out soon will probably be 4k+Dolby Vision on netflix.

 

[Lord Dalek]

I even think Alien 3 is a long shot since Fox doesn't seem to be digging into their catalog and they'd probably only release it as a part of an Alien box set.

I wouldn't count out The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the always rumored to be coming soon Panic Room either.

Dragon Tatoo is more likely than Panic Room from a financial perspective.

 

[JoshZ]

Seven wasn't so heavy with those kinds of effects, although the movie was digitally re-graded way back in the late 1990's for the 2-disc Platinum Edition DVD. It's very likely a new 4K version would have to start from scratch with a new DI.

Se7en was digitally re-graded again under Fincher's supervision for the Blu-ray in 2010.

 

[Kyle_D]

Dragon Tatoo is more likely than Panic Room from a financial perspective.

Both titles have been rumored for months. The Bits even posted in January that a Panic Room announcement was imminent, but nothing came of it. I wouldn't be surprised if both titles are being held for release so they can tie-in with The Killer later this year.

https://thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/012022-1400

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Would be nice to at least get a good BD of Panic Room... though I did buy the HD digital via iTunes (and it's eligible for Movies Anywhere since it's a Sony title) -- should get free upgrade to 4K if Sony ever gets around to doing that, which is maybe somewhat more likelihood than an actual 4K disc release (judging from recent trends)...

_Man_