Twilight Time, a specialty label which focuses on releasing vintage films previously unavailable on DVD, has struck a deal with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to license and release classic films from the Sony-owned Columbia Pictures library in high-definition Blu-ray editions. Currently, Twilight Time also have a licensing agreement with Twentieth Century Fox Entertainment, and recently released on Blu-ray Michael Curtiz's
The Egyptian (1954).
According to a statement released by Twilight Time, only 3000 units of each title will be produced, aimed at the collector/classic film aficionado market, and available exclusively online through www.screenarchives.com, the nation's largest independent distributor of specialty soundtracks.
The November 8th Blu-ray debut of director Cy Endfield's and special effects master Ray Harryhausen's 1961 science fiction/fantasy classic,
Mysterious Island, will be followed by a new release on the first Tuesday of each month.
Update:
Mysterious Island is now available for exclusive pre-order at
Screen Archives.
Scheduled follow-up on December 13th is the original
Fright Night (1985), the horror/comedy cult favorite written and directed by Tom Holland and starring Chris Sarandon and Roddy McDowall.
The label is the brainchild of 30-year Warner Bros veteran Brian Jamieson and filmmaker/music restoration specialist Nick Redman. In his long tenure at Warner Home Video, Jamieson initiated and oversaw countless legacy restorations, including the films of Stanley Kubrick, Samuel Fuller's
The Big Red One, and Sam Peckinpah's
The Wild Bunch. Redman, a film historian and Oscar nominee for his 1997 documentary,
The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage, is also a prime mover behind Twentieth Century Fox Entertainment's pioneering series of limited edition soundtracks, the inspiration for Twilight Time's release model.
Unlike movies-on-demand offerings, each Twilight Time release is a Blu-ray or DVD (not a DVD-R) properly pressed from a restored transfer. Each is accompanied by a collectible 8-page booklet complete with original essay, stills, and poster art. And each Twilight Time disc provides, whenever possible, that extra most coveted by cinemusic enthusiasts: an isolated score.
Grover Crisp, Sony Pictures Entertainment's Executive Vice President for Asset Management, Film Restoration, and Digital Mastering, is enthusiastic about his studio's new partnership with the label. "Our collaboration with Twilight Time will allow us to make available for Blu-ray release some of our library's most collectible titles in a way fans have been asking for: restored and re-mastered with attention to detail and quality."
And Jamieson concurs: "Sony and Twilight Time," he says, "will be serving both the collectible drive of film aficionados, and, in a larger sense, the cause of cinema literacy."