UNIVERSAL: Is the rest of the world REALLY not getting these BTTF Extras?? (1 Viewer)

[TheoGB]

From DVD Debate:

Back To The Future's Director Robert Zemeckis and Writer/Producer Bob Gale have just finished recording an audio commentary for each of the trilogy's movies. These commentaries will apaprently only be contained within the upcoming Region 1 release of this eagerly awaited package.
Other Region 1 specific extras are to include "some newly uncovered deleted scenes from all three films, vintage making-of faeturettes, a new Trilogy documentary and video footage of a Q&A session with Zemeckis at USC film school last month".

I thought the days of massively different releases were gone, but it seems I was wrong.
This is probably one of the most unbelievable differences between a R1 product and the other regions. Can anyone shed any light on this??

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Probably because the Australian disc has already gone to press, and he just recorded the commentaries a few weeks back. Also, Universal does not operate as 1 company, every area does pretty much what they want.

 

[TheoGB]

Universal is definitely a peculiar company. I'd forgotten how bad the UK branch is/was...
The point is that someone somewhere must surely have given the R4 arm of the company a choice about release.
Either they failed to make them aware of these extra features when they committed to the discs, or the R4 arm decided they weren't worth it. Either way its a real shame. If Columbia/Tristar still had international rights we'd have identical packages, I am certain. :frowning:

 

[Bjorn Olav Nyberg]

Sounds like what happened to MGM's Terminator release then? The R1 also had more material because they felt the need to speed up the release in Europe and release it as early as possible.

Just goes to demonstrate that they really don't care all that much about the actual extras.

 

[TheoGB]

T1 was different. MGM had the chance to release it a year earlier due to U.S. rights issues. Surely Universal has always owned the rights to BTTF. The CTHV thing was cited as the reason for the delay last time I looked because of the revenue loss for Universal...

 

[James Reader]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if R2/R4 got 'diet' releases.

Surely Universal knows that having waited for 'X' years, another two, three or four months wouldn't matter as long as we got the definitive release. But no, that's too much to ask.

While I understand region coding (though I don't agree with it) stunts like this are just going to encourage people to import - studios cannot complain about cross-region importing when they are knowingly releasing an inferior product in one region.

Talking of Universal, who thinks that the Original E.T. won't even be released in the UK?