The Blu-ray release of
Arachnophobia, which was due to hit store shelves on September 4, has been delayed to September 25, 2012 so that Disney can address "encoding issues" with the discs.
Disney issued the following statement:
Please be advised that the release date for Arachnophobia has changed to September 25, 2012. It has come to our attention that some of the recent review discs of Arachnophobia have encoding issues, and therefore are not up to our usual high-quality standard.
In his review of the now-recalled version, staff reviewer Michael Reuben noted "there is almost no true black anywhere in the image. Its blacks are a dark shade of grey." Whether this is a part of the aforementioned encoding issues isn't entirely clear, but it will be interesting to see what changes are made to the presentation. Mr. Reuben will be posting his full impressions of the corrected version when he receives an updated screener later this month.
Disney also sent a notice to retailers this week, one that mentions both
Arachnophobia and
The Great Mouse Detective:
Please be advised that the release date for Arachnophobia BD has changed to September 25, 2012, and the release date for The Great Mouse Detective BD has changed to October 9, 2012. Therefore, we are requesting all Arachnophobia BD and The Great Mouse Detective BD product you have received be returned to Technicolor and not sold or otherwise made available to consumers. We apologize for any inconvenience at this time and appreciate your cooperation in this matter.
Whether
The Great Mouse Detective delay is due to quality control issues as well has yet to be confirmed.